Skip to main content

Varese: convertible car rides and Italian lakes

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

Popular posts from this blog

12 hours in VENICE: pizza, ice-cream, coffee ...and elasticated waistbands!

WE'VE REACHED ITALY!!! Yippeeeeee!! I think Claire and I have been looking forward to this leg of the journey since we started off!! Th e land of pizza and pasta and cannoli and biscotti and COFFEE!! We have checked off at least three of that in our first day here as we've been exploring the beautiful Venezia!  We were originally hoping to have a few days here in Venice, or at least two, but unfortunately our wee pockets couldn't fulfil that...we arrived to the tail end of the Venetian Film Festival and so the price of accommodation, which is usually in the top end of our budget, was skyrocketed! Therefore with the the flexibility that the interail pass gives you, a wee change of plan, we spent the day in Venice and in the evening we headed to Florence for a couple of nights.  But first I'll tell you about Venice.  Arriving early off the overnight train (which claire may have mentioned was a LOT more comfortable that the first one we did) we got started in Venice shortl...

Zagreb and the not so orient express.

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...

Zagreb

We had a really slow start today, well claire had a lie in, and I had a slow morning researching accomication and things to do in the next couple of weeks. Anyway once we cpruanlly got going we got the tram to opposite some of town (and as we were still not sure how th tram tickets worked, we managed to use e same ticket we bought last night since we hadn't validated it :/ oops)  We got the ram to Illica street and walked back towards the Illica square, whilst looking out for a pub/beer cellar that my dad had recommended! ...one hitch, he couldn't really remember the name or where exactly it as but he could walk me through how to find it. And so he did (by whatsapp and google street view of course!) haha the place was in Matica Hrvatskih Obrtnika and was originally part of the old technical college of the Zagreb University. Good beer and good food, and we tried a local delicacy prunes wrapped in bacon and cooked! Yummmm!!!        Then we shuffled to the gallery...