Travelling With Steve: Lake Maggiore (The Last Post)

This is it! We fly home tomorrow morning. Our stopover in Italy has been awesome. We haven't seen a cloud since we got here. The plan was to drive north from Malpensa Airport (west of Milan) to Lake Maggiore to visit the island gardens (Borromeo Islands) near Stresa (where we stayed). We had two very nice evenings in Stresa and spent the first day on the ferries visiting the three islands. They were way more impressive than I expected. For this time of year all the islands had very lush and colourful gardens - we didn't expect that - particularly given the season for the year shuts tomorrow. Isola Madre was a perfect scale for a beautiful late 1700's Palazzo and fantastic lush garden. Isola Superiore was an old fishing village (covering the whole island) with multiple restaurants for people visiting the other islands. Isola Bella had a fantastical Baroque Palace (from late 1600's) with equally amazing garden. We enjoyed all of the islands and had fantastic weather to appreciate them. Isola Madre and Isola Bella are owned by the Borromeo family, who are still major landowners around Lake Maggiore (since 1300's - when they started their fortune as bankers in Florence). Having visited the three islands on the first day, that freed us up to do something else today. There were various options but we went for a drive up to the high mountains and did a fantastic walk up to a glacier. The views and weather were amazing. It was a bit arduous (630m ascent) but very straight forward. It was pretty busy as it's Saturday on a public holiday weekend. Here are some pics.....

Isola Bella from the foreshore of Stresa on our first evening after we arrived from London. The sunset colours were great....

Next morning on the ferry. This is Baveno on the way to Isola Madre. Most towns have a dominant church or clock tower, even high up in the mountains...

Good conditions for a boat trip.....

Looking out one of the windows of the Palazzo on Isola Madre (an outbuilding now a cafe). The gardens were extensive and very lush/tropical. The Palazzo was very impressive....

There were lots of paintings and furniture inside the Palazzo, but the puppet theatres from the 1700's (to entertain guests) were pretty special...

Some of the rooms were pretty elaborate....

Looking back on Isola Madre (with the Palazzo showing on the right), on the way to Isola Superiore......

We had lunch on Isola Superiore at the little cafe in this square, next to the church portico. A tower looms above.....

Looking back on Isola Superiore on the way to Isola Bella.....

Isola Bella. On the left is the massive Baroque Palace. To the right is a small collection of fishermen's houses (now shops and restaurants with some accommodation). Behind the houses is a massive garden which predates the palace....

The rooms were - palatial.....

The views out of every window were spectacular being of Lake Maggiore and the mountain backdrops. This view looks back towards Isola Superiore where we had lunch under the church tower....

Under the palace was a complex of several rooms (a large 'apartment') painstakingly designed as a grotto with shells, stones etc throughout. It was quite a spectacle. The idea was it was cooler during summer months and a complement to the gardens....

A series of mid 1500's tapestries from Belgium purchased by the family in the 1700's and hanging here ever since....

A garden view from one of the towers where the family and visitors would have a rest whilst touring the gardens....

There must have been a rocky outcrop on the original island that they decided in the 1600's to build this extraordinary structure upon. It contains multiple garden terraces, statues and a viewing terrace on top.....