“Bonjourno” Italy!

We’ve spent the past several days travelling with my folks, visiting from Kelowna for the first part of our stay in Italy. We met them, after some tribulation, in Meina, a small town somewhat north of Milan. Christina and I had departed from Nice early in the morning. We caught a commuter train to Ventimille, or Ventimiglia, in Italy, where we transfered to a high(er)-speed train to Milan. We shared our 6-seat berth with an American couple from California/Texas, Chris and Richard, with whom we chatted for the duration of the 5 hour ride. In Milan we changed to a slow train bound for Stresa, overshooting our actual destination by a couple of minor stops, then backtracked on a super slow train packed with school children. I was keen to play out our agreed upon plan to wait for the folks at the station, but there was absolutely nothing there, so after an hour or so we walked down to the B&B and checked ourselves in. Another hour later they pulled in, after a much longer day on the road than anticipated, in conjunction with numerous other trials strewn along their past couple of days. We had a nice dinner in the nearby town of Arona and caught up on each others most recent adventures.

Meina, Dormolletto, Como: One of dad’s numerous interests and hobbies is horses. He has a few, and has toyed with breeding, and one of his animals claims the famous race horse Ribot as her great-grand-sire. Ribot was bred in the nearby town of Dormelletto by Frederico Tesio, making the area an interesting one for dad, so we went to try and check out the area. After some searching we located the park containing the horse paddocks and private farms which are the ancestors of the original breeding farm in this area.

We walked the numerous paths between fields and farms, and generally enjoyed our time in the park.

There was no big sign reading “Tasio Lived Here” or anything, but the name was familiar to the locals we encountered, who were happy to try and communicate with us, despite some linguistic impedences. We met a couple of ladies who were particularly keen to show us around, and took us to a specific field which housed a zebra, in addition to a few regular horses. Not sure how he slipped in there, but it was a neat find.

We returned to the lakefront boardwalk in Arona for a picnic lunch of some cheese and bread and olives that we had picked up in the morning, then felt ambitious enough to take a run at Lake Como.

It’s not close. Especially when you keep to the backroads, and most especially when you don’t find your way the first time… or the second time. After a significant amount of driving around we did finally arrive in Como, the town at the south-westerly end of the lake. We took a short walk around, and headed up the funicular to check out the view over town and the lake. We found a spectacular sunset, looking over the mountains to the north, all the way to Switzerland.

We spent more time ogling the view than intended, and it was fully dark by the time we arrived at the bottom again. We had a nice dinner of simple pasta in the square of Como’s walled old town, near where we had parked, then hopped in the car to leave. The tangle of one-way streets, and closed entry ways had us thinking that we might never find our way out, but eventually we made our escape. We made a couple of wrong turns yet again on our way home, which provided us with an irritable tour of Verese before we finally concluded our day. We were all quite ready for a drink of the 15-year Glenlivet that dad had brough by the time we arrived at home.

Stresa, Genova, Rapallo: Being so close to some interesting areas, and not wanting to rush off before having seen more of the area, we visited Stresa. We had time for either an island tour of some of the floating palaces of Lake Maggiore, or the view from the top via another funicular ascending the peaks to Mottarone. We were all inclined towards the island tour, but the “boat captain” character who approached us in the parking lot became quite snippy when we deliberated over our options a little longer than he would have liked, and his attitude (as well as the price) soured us on the idea. We decided to give ourselves the alpine tour, and drove to the top of the mountains, which was not as fast as the cable-car, but probably a lot more fun. Dad had a blast on the incredibly steep and windy roads – I’m certain that there were a few blind hairpins that had us all hanging on to our seats!

The view from the top was very much worth the trip. Beyond just the lake, you could see for probably hundreds of miles in any direction. Most impressive were the Swiss moutain ranges, rising dramatically against the blue sky. A ski hill during the winter, the hilltop winter activity is a bobsled-on-rails ride that we thought about trying, but upon reflection decided that the ride down would likely be more thrilling anyway, so didn’t bother.

We took the “autostrada” toll highway to Genova instead of the free secondary roads. Despite posted speed limit signs, vehicles roared down the highway at anything up to 180 km/h, so eating up the miles is no trouble at all.

Genova was a historic, but not very charming, stop to make. We used the Tourist Info Center to book our nights accomodation a short way out of town, in Rapallo, then took a few hours to explore. We saw a flag throwing demostration, a bicycle-powered concert, a gang of (what I can only assume to be authentic) nuns, a naval warship, and the inside of several cups of coffee. After our quick tour none of us were dissapointed to be moving on, though there’s a lot more to see, Genova certainly has a “big city” feel to it.

We took the autostrada once again to make good time to Rapallo, and found ourselves in a very nice little apartment perfectly suited to our needs. It was already evening, so we unpacked and had a walk down the boardwalk, stopping for dinner at a seafood restaurant. Dad and I shared a large dish of fish – expertly dissassembled at our table – while mom had a caprese salad, and Christina tried the lobster spaghetti.

After another long day we needed another slurp of whisky, and enjoyed that in the cool evening on our patio. What goes better with whisky than oranges?

It just so happened that the neighboring yard had a nice big orange tree, so mom and dad decided that a sample was in order.

Rapallo seems like a very nice little town, worthy of a little more time, but we’re on a tight schedule. Next stop, Cinque Terre!