2004 Europe

Diana with Isola Bella and Lake Maggiore



June 1 – We got up this morning and took a boat to Isola Bella (above, over Diana’s left shoulder) a small island about a quarter of a mile off shore from Stresa. It’s the home of the Borromeo family, the historically prominent family of the area. They have a small town there, a café and a church, in addition to their palace and gardens. The palace is a large, villa-like building that the family still uses in the summer. You can only tour the first floor and the gardens as they live on the second floor. The villa is nice but the gardens are the main attraction.



The gardens are terraced and have a façade on the side towards the house that displays some very nice sculpture. On the terrace between the villa and the façade there were two white peacocks doing their best mating calls and dances (below). The peahens in the area didn’t seem that interested and we found three more hens on the other side of the raised garden trying to hide from the action. After crossing the peacock mating ground you climb up several small terraces to reach the top. There’s a great view of Stresa and the Italian Alps from there. You can also look down on all the other garden terraces (below) from there. Very beautiful, with lots of flowers in bloom and very neatly manicured, formal style, hedges and shrubs.



Just north of Isola Bella is Isola Superiore dei Pescatori (Fisherman’s Island) (below). It has a larger village and makes a very picturesque scene in front of the Italian/Swiss Alps.



After we toured the island we had lunch in Stresa and boarded the bus for the drive to Zermatt, Switzerland. You can’t drive into Zermatt so we had to board a train for a 20-minute ride up the hill to the city. We’re staying in a hotel designed like a Swiss Chalet. In the morning we are going to take the Gorneratat, the longest cog railway in Europe up to 11,000 feet to get a look at the Matterhorn. By the time we got to the hotel I was tired but as we are staying two nights it’s time to see about laundry. I found a laundry a block from the hotel that said they could get the wash to me the next day and I dropped off about 10 pounds of washing.



That evening we ate at the hotel and had an appetizer of Rocklette. Rocklette is a plate with goat cheese melted on it accompanied by pickles, potatoes and bread to scrape in the cheese and eat. It sounds funny but it was great. The rest of the meal was good as well. Early train tomorrow and it’s raining this evening so off to bed early.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger