Italy Trip, Saturday, July 29 (Day 10)

OK, slight blip here to note that when I returned to the hotel after the day’s outing, I found that my laptop wouldn’t boot. I tried several times and although the power light came on, the screen remained dark. I tried going to the internet on my phone to find things I could possibly try, but because I was in Italy, everything–and I mean everything–came up in Italian! That was quite frustrating, but with nothing left to try, I gave it up for the night and posted a note about the situation on the blog via my phone.

From then to the end of the trip, I had no computer, so the rest of the entries about the trip I’m writing after getting home. (About a week and a half after getting home, in fact, ’cause…stuff.)

Turns out the solution was to replace the motherboard on the computer. I chose the option to have the Dell service at home, so that was pretty convenient and now I’m up and running again.

So that’s my story, and now I’m going to continue on with the travelogue and pictures.

This day we were scheduled for a hike in Val Grande National Park. For various reasons, most of our group decided we’d rather not do that. Nikki and Chris went, with Andrea as the guide. Jo and Andrea had come up with an alternative for the day’s adventure for the rest of us, and that was visiting the three islands in the bay at Stresa, on Lago Maggiore. These islands are only reachable by boat taxi, and there’s a brisk business with several options.

The bay was just a block from the hotel, so we were quickly on our way. This day turned out to be overcast for much of the day, so not ideal for pictures, but I found some interesting stuff to photograph that didn’t require bright sunshine.

First up was the farthest island, Isola Madre. This island has a large house (castle?) and accompaning church, with beautiful gardens and trails all over. I didn’t delve into the history, but it was obviously a place where some important, and wealthy, folks lived.

I didn’t spend much time in the house, but oh, the gardens and landscaping! It was a lovely atmosphere. I’ll tell you right here that the theme for the day pretty much turned out to be stairs/steps. I’ve always loved taking pictures of stairs for some reason, and there were plenty of great examples on these three islands. Actually, that’s pretty much the case for this whole area of Italy. What do you do when you’re around a body of water where the land climbs steeply up from the shore? You build steps to navigate! 🙂 Very picturesque, and a good physical workout, too.

Also on the island is an aviary with beautiful peacocks and another colorful bird…maybe macaws? They were all relatively tame since people are always everywhere, so it wasn’t too hard to get pretty close for some good pics. I’m showing two of a peacock that’s displaying. In the first, I show him partly from the side. Seeing him in person was interesting because he was “shaking his (brown) tail feathers,” literally! I hadn’t given much thought to the rest of the bird other than the display you see from the front, but most of him is actually behind the veil of feathers. I tried to catch at least most of him. Then I got a close-up of his beautiful blue front, surrounded by his feather fan. Lovely.

This island had a small gift shop where we all met up, briefly. Jo was quite pressed today to keep track of all of her charges. Everyone wanted to keep wandering off somewhere! But we had to meet up at the dock at a specific time to catch our specific boat to get to the next island. We all made it together from Isola Madre to catch the boat to the next island, Isola Pescatore.

Once we arrived here, it was about lunchtime. This island was more populous with lots of restaurants and shopping. We chose a restaurant and had a lovely lunch. Then we were off on our own to explore. Couldn’t get lost. It’s pretty much a 10-minute walk from one end of the island to the other, and the width is even less.

This island had some great scenery. I’ve chosen just a few of the pictures I took to give you a flavor. I often had to wait quite a while for people to move out of the picture, so it took a while, but I think the results are worth it. Practically everywhere you turn is a picture opportunity.

Besides the alleyways and streets–and stairs–there was a small protected harbor with a guardian angel. Taking my life in my hands, I braved falling into the water to get a close-up shot of her. You can see from the long-range shot of her where I was standing, trying to get the right things in and out of focus. I’m really happy with that shot.

This is a touristy island where it’s not only shopkeepers and restaurant owners can generate income. Two enterprising musicians commandeered a park bench, put out a hat, and started playing. Honestly, they seemed almost bored but were willing to pose for a picture, so I contributed a bit of cash to the effort.

Miraculously, we all met up at the appointed time to catch the boat to the last of the three islands. This was Isola Bella. Rather than just a family house, this island had a real castle on it. Must have been the seat of government. This island seemed like a larger combination of the other two, with lots of stores and eateries, in addition to the castle.

With no map for guidance, we all just wandered. I was pretty much by myself taking pictures, but I’d periodically meet up with some of the other folks as we all wove in and out of the streets and byways.

In the first picture from Isola Bella, between two planters and over a boat, I’m looking back at the house on the first island (Isola Madre), where we started the day. Then I headed along the shore and just walked inland when I found a set of stairs to climb. The picture with the colorful fish mounted on a wall gives a pretty good idea of the architecture, where everything is up or down a flight (or two) of stairs!

After walking through the town for some time, I hadn’t seen the gardens that were supposed to be here. I walked back to find the entrance to the castle, thinking they must be through there. I ran into Robyne here, and we both wandered through a gallery or two trying to find the exit to the gardens. We ended up going back downstairs to ask the ticket-taker how to get there. He told us about a “magic door” (on a sensor so it opens automatically). We said we’d seen that, but that the entrance to that area was roped off. He said to just let ourselves through the rope. Being rule-abiding folks, it had never occurred to us to do that! But we did, and after climbing more stairs (is there no end to these?!?!?), we came upon a magnificent sculpture in the garden. Rather, this was a group of many sculptures set within a wall-like structure. Very impressive.

After a while of trying to get a close-up of this with no (or few) people in it, Kim arrived, too. She helped get someone’s attention to get them to move so I had a brief window to grab a couple of pictures.

Pretty soon, we saw Jo, too. By that time, we were pushing our window for getting back to the boat for our agreed departure time, but we made it. At least, some of us did. 🙂 Though she had just one ticket for all of us, she worked a deal with the boat captain to take the three of us who were there back to the harbor. Jo waited for the others to arrive and came back with them on the next boat.

This evening, most headed off to a restaurant owned by a cousin of Andrea’s. Reportedly, it was a good time. Not being a wine drinker (or any other kind of drinker), I wasn’t much in the mood for a late night out. Besides, the two nights in Stresa were the only nights I had a room to myself in the hotel, so I just took the time to enjoy. After dark, I did venture onto the rooftop to see if I could get some good night shots of the lights around the lake, but wasn’t too successful. I haven’t figured out the right combination for low-light, distance photography, I guess. Also, I was a little nervous about getting locked out of the hotel as they’d shut the door to the roof. I opened it, but didn’t want anyone to shut it behind me, so I didn’t spend too long there.

Tomorrow it’s off to Lake Como, our last lake on the trip.