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WEEK TEN: ITALY TO FRANCE
Day 64: Thursday 16th May 2024
It was a nicer morning but not sufficient to change our minds about moving on. We had originally planned to be here for 3 days, but the weather is grim so we might as well use a wet day to travel.
We decided to go to Lake Como on the way, stopping at Lecco for a wander. I had found a good parking spot near a bridge into the town and we headed for that hoping it would be empty and it was! We left Colin locked up tight and walked over the bridge and along the waters edge, but it wasn’t as tourist friendly as we had expected. We looked for a bakers and found a Carrefour Express to buy our bread, but when we came out, we heard thunder and then the heavens opened! We were stranded in a shopping arcade for several minutes until it eased enough for us to brave the return to the van.
Whilst we hadn’t been in Lecco long, it was long enough for a good look at the Lake and to take a few photos, albeit rather dark because of the rain. I had visited Como with Jenni a few years ago when we met at Bergamo for a weekend when she was studying in Vienna (made sense at the time!). I seem to remember it rained all weekend, and we visited Como on the train and couldn’t see the lake and we were right by it!
I took over the driving and we headed onto the motorway, wanting to get to our next site, Camping Rose on Lake Maggiore, a few miles south of Arona, as soon as possible. We were impressed with the check in procedure and reception and the pitch was perfectly flat and with good electric and water, but …. it started to rain, and boy did it rain! We waited in the van for it to stop and for someone from the site to come and unlock the box and connect our electric, the only place where that has happened. The same has to happen when we leave.
Geoff braved the rain to fill up with water, but disaster struck as our hose sprung a leak. It is a clever expanding one, and will be difficult if not impossible to fix. He resorted to using the watering can, and we may well have to invest in a new hose, such a shame with only a couple of weeks to go!
We enjoyed our cuppa before a walk around this excellent little site, with lovely views of the lake, sadly the weather is not good, but we are hopeful for tomorrow.
Day 65: Friday 17th May 2024
Our last day in Italy and it was a good one!
The sun was shining this morning so we made the most of it with breakfast outside before heading off at 10 to catch a bus. We had planned another little adventure day, using various means of public transport to take advantage of this lovely part of the world.
The bus was on time and we were soon in Arona which turned out to be a real gem. We found the ticket office for the lake ferry boats and bought two tickets to Stresa. I was mildly put out when the lady asked if we were over 65, cheek, in respect of me anyway! I duly presented our passports to confirm and we were given a reduced rate, so it was worth the mortification!
We had an hour or so before the boat departed so we walked through the old part of the town and back along the promenade. It was delightful, by far the most elegant and classy place we have been in, we really liked it, even so far as to say this would be somewhere to return to.
We boarded a large boat called Arona and went straight up onto the top deck to enjoy the amazing views across a very blue lake under a very blue sky. The weather was absolutely brilliant, especially in light of the awful few days we have had recently. Where we are staying on Maggiore, the terrain is quite flat, but as we moved north on the lake it became more interesting, with the top of the lake in the foothills of the Alps. We stopped at Angera (with an amazing castle, on the Rocca di Angera), Ranco, Belgirate, Santa Caterina (a Sanctuary) and finally arriving in Stresa.
By this time we were feeling quite hungry so our first mission was to find lunch. This we did in a restaurant in the old town, and very nice it was too! We wandered back to the promenade to find a shady place to sit and were surprised to see a brand new red Dotto road train drive by. Well, we had to try that out and bought our tickets for the next trip. It was only 25 minutes but it took us up quite high above the water for a splendid view, as well as down to the quay where regular boats depart to visit the two nearby islands, Isola Madre and Isola Bella. We didn’t have time to do that as we had a train to catch at 1636.
We walked back to the station, buying our tickets from a fairly old automatic ticket machine. The train was about 15 minutes late and we watched a train come in from Milan before ours arrived, and we were very excited as it was fairly new, and very smart Hitachi. Sadly, ours was not, in fact it was covered in graffiti and we were lucky to find a window that was clear so we could enjoy the lake view all the way back to Dormelletto, the station near our campsite.
We returned to Colin to sit in the evening sunshine, reviewing our day and planning our route for our last country on this tour tomorrow – France here we come.
PS: the duck picture, if you can see it, is one where Mummy duck had 2 baby ducks on her back!
