Skip to main content

Varese: convertible car rides and Italian lakes

Image
By
Well. Had a VERY relaxed and amazing sleep in David's gorgeous colourful apartment last night! We didn't even set an alarm today we simply woke up when we were ready. Unfortunately the SEVRAL churches in Davies neighbourhood had other ideas. I was woken at 6 first then again at 8 so I just got up. It was a lovely view from the front balcony and you and from the back veranda you could see the hills of Switzerland. 

   

 


Once everyone else had risen we had a coffee on the balcony and headed off in David's convertible car towards two lakes in the area, Lake Lago d'orta and Lake Maggiore. We first headed to Lago d'orta, perched at the bottom of a deep valley we waked down a very steep hill from the car park th the village and the lake. The village was quite typical of a lake village in Italy; steep pebbled streets, colourful houses that are slightly falling apart, altogether a very beautiful and idyllic setting to have lunch. 

(Photos to follow)

We took a different route back to Varese via the biggest lake in the area, Lake Maggiore, where we took a short ferry journey over to the other side. We had ice lollies and acted like wee kiddies :D it was fun.

In the evening we had David's good friend Ali join us for dinner. As I had volunteered to prepare a meal we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some supplies. This has to be one of the best grocery stores I've ever been in! Hahahaha all my favourite foods were super cheap and fresh and I just wanted to buy everything and ship it home! Anyway I decided to make a big salad so we had fresh olives and tomatoes with bresaola and buffalo mozzarella 😍 
We had a feast, ate and drank wine till there wasn't any left. We laughed a lot and told a lot of stories and altogether had a fabulous time and felt completely at ease in the company of these three ace people! 
Finishing off the night with a wee dram of Scottish whisky and of Italian Grappa David, Heather, Claire and I sat up for another couple of hours exchanging more stories until sleep started catching up on us. 

Thanks again for a wonderful time David and Heather :)

Xx F  



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2 : A day in Amsterdam

By
Hello! We have lots to tell you about our day in Amsterdam, we tried the food, visited many places and learned a lot about the history of this liberal city.  Where we stayed: It had been suggested that we tried the lucky lake hostel, and it was certainly worth the pennies (perhaps one of the more expensive hostels we'll be staying in during this trip). The cheerful decor and helpful staff really made us feel at home, we're already dreaming of coming back some day. Our highlight was sitting in the hammocks holding a nice cold Amsterdam beer.  (Pictures to follow ) Places we explored: We managed to cover so much of Amsterdam in one day! The beauty of this place is that it's so easy to get around on foot (just watch for the cyclists, they will not  stop for you). As it was such a nice day we spent a lot of time visiting the outside attractions. We were lucky enough to stumble across a free walking tour, lead by a lovely guide called Karen.  (Pictures to follow ) Food we...
1 comment
Read more

Vienna day 2

By
The rain is here to stay, making today another good day to visit a gallery. We left our big heavy bags at the hostel after checking out and made our way to the Belvedere gallery which is one of Vienna's many great places to absorb some culture. We bought tickets to see the Gustav Klimt exhibition which was just amazing. The paintings are huge in real life. 'The kiss' was the centre piece, taking up an entire wall top to bottom. A lot of the works on display were unfinished as he died before he could complete them, but there was something nice about seeing his work from a more deconstructed perspective.    Along with that we got to see some of Egon Sheile's stuff too, which is an artist our life drawing teacher always used to rave about. He's a big deal when it comes to drawing naked bodies and even some not so naked bodies. A lot of the work we saw was (relatively clothed) family portraits and embracing couples which were similar in subject matter yet very different...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zagreb and the not so orient express.

By
Not going to lie, this was not the most productive day we've had so far. We had the majority of the day to spend in Zagreb before we needed to board our first night train of the trip. However, we couldn't do anything with our big heavy rucksacks so we had to lug them about wherever we went. To be fair we did do a lot of walking the previous day, so we felt quite content with exploring the areas closer to the train station.  So, first of all we walked up to the grand hotel that used to serve as a rest stop for travellers of the great Orient Express. We considered having a wee coffee just to experience a small slice of what it might have been like to live such an affluent life (the hotel has been visited by the likes of Queen Elizabeth...). I would love to say that we did... But we gazed at the fancy waiters in their fancy suits and then took a look at ourselves and settled upon having our pack lunch in the gardens with a view of the hotel instead. We we haven't had a great e...
1 comment
Read more