He just keeps rolling along

15 September 2010

Today, we decided to do some touristy stuff....

Francesca, the very friendly owner of our guesthouse, suggested that we not spend our day rushing around Milan, but rather do a trip to Centrovalli, Switzerland. It was not very difficult to convince us.

The first leg of this wonderful excursion is by normal Italian train from Baveno to Domodossola, a distance of 35km, initially along the lake, and then passing through various smaller villages. In Domodossola, you change to a smaller train, perfectly equipped with large windows to ensure that you see every possible bit of the beautiful scenery as you travel across the Alps to Locarno, a Swiss village at the furthest end of Lake Maggiore. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record - the scenery was just beautiful. You are surrounded by mountains, with quaint villages appearing when you least expect them to. As always, we were amazed at how brave the Italians are to be building villages so high up in the mountains.

In Locarno, we had a few hours to kill before the boat trip back to Stresa, so we took a cute little tourist train that shows you the town in 30 minutes, and then continued to browse around the shops in the main square. And seeing that we were in Switzerland, it would only be logical to taste some good Swiss chocolates. Hmmmm.

The boat trip back to Stresa was bliss. A quiet slow ride down the lake, passing by all the villages dotted along the edge of the rather large lake. At times I thought that we could have spent our time seeing more places rather than just sitting on such a slow boat, but the peacefulness of the day was definitely what we both needed.

From Stresa we took a smaller boat back to Baveno, stopping at the two islands. And even though we could not explore the actual islands, seeing them from up close was all we needed. This, followed by supper in one of Stresa’s little piazza’s made for a perfect, quiet day.