Lago d'Orta, Laggo Maggiore

The northern lakes of Italy are, in my view, terrifically beautiful -- a favorite destination for a person like me, who loves to explore mountains and great bodies of water, all nestled in a mild, Mediterranean climate. There are about a half dozen of these large lakes and they extend from the Alps into the flatter plains of Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto. If you ever look at a topographical map of Italy, you see this arc of mountains, with the lakes snaking from north to south,  and suddenly they all end and you have the vast plain in which rests Milan. You can almost see how the collision of the African and Eurasian plates some 80 million years ago caused that mountain fold, sort of like a train barging into a squishy piece of dough. Well, at least that's how it all looks to me.

Lake Orta is parallel to the next giant body of water -- Lake Maggiore. True, mountains separate the two, but they are not the highest peaks and easily traversable by car. There are tunnels, there are passes. And so if I'm thinking about a day's excursion, Verbania -- a town on the shores of Lago Maggiore is a logical choice.

A few words about Lago Maggiore, which I did once visit with Ed, but my memories are fuzzy and dominated by the epic discovery then and there that I had lost my passport: we spent all our time scheming to quickly get a replacement. Being the busy travelers, and having just come by train from the Netherlands and being en route to Sicily, we needed to file police reports and schedule trips to the consulate. Lago Maggiore is blurry background noise to a very chaotic set of hours.

And that's a shame, because Maggiore is the second largest lake in Italy and it is so long (65 km or 40 miles) that actually a good chunk of it isn't in Italy at all, but rests serenely in the Swiss Alps. And this lake is exceptionally beautiful. Verbania, Lago Maggiore's big town, is about 25 kilometers from where we are here, on Lago d'Orta. 

And here's our great luck: the forecast of rain and storms fizzled and once again we wake up to plentiful sunshine. I let Snowdrop sleep in. She and I have been going to bed at the same time (that's her choice and not a good one given that I write rather late into the night) and I have to give her some extra hours, therefore, in the morning. That's fine: I catch up on stuff and I watch the early sun's reflection on the mountains of the western shore.

By 9, we are at the breakfast table.

She has developed a style: line up all the foods in a row and devour them!

And about an hour or so later, we are hitching a ride to Verbania. [I suppose "hitching" is the wrong word, as we are paying dearly for that ride. Should have I rented a car for this trip? Absolutely not! Once you have a car, you begin using it excessively. You do not go to the local trattoria for dinner, you drive over to the more notable place down the road. You skip the ferry, you don't ask Tiziano for a ride to the trail head and you don't listen to his stories of the region. So yes, I'm glad we do not have a car, even if on a rare day I have to pay for a taxi.]

Our young man of the mountains, Tiziano, told us to urge the taxi driver to take the longer route that passes near yet another lake, a small one called Lago di Mergozzo. It's hard to totally appreciate the beauty of this small lake from the window of a car, but I am glad to have seen it.

It is indeed lovely! It's fed entirely by mountain streams and motorboats are forbidden on it so that it is one of the cleanest lakes of them all. [Though when Maggiore floods, the small river that joins the two reverses its flow so that it is possible for pollutants from Maggiore to enter it, but this is rare event. And here I'm just going to add that for us, the absence of much motorboat traffic on Orta too was notable and blissfully wonderful. Yes, they do have boats traversing it, but here we are, still in the thick of the summer season and we see hardly any boats at all. An hour will go by and I will neither hear nor see a single motorboat. Yesterday, out in the kayak, we rarely had to deal with the waves of a passing speed boats. It's not that you cannot use a boat on Orta, it's just that the lake is not (yet) a major destination and most people here do not own or use a boat. The lake thus is one of the quieter ones I've been to in Italy. This kind of water peacefulness is unimaginable back home, where even on our tiny Lake Waubesa, boat traffic is out of control.]

Okay, we are in Verbania. A town to walk in, a lakefront to admire.

Walking a town's old streets is probably not the best activity for a seven year old -- wandering aimlessly is not something kids like to do, but she is a good sport and she is used to these strolls. And the start of it has something that she has missed -- a playground!

Followed by another favorite -- a visit to a store that sells stuff to lure the casual shopper. Gifts for those back home and those not back home.

And I see that Tiziano was correct: surprisingly perhaps, Verbania is not really a tourist town. There's no one in this store. There's no one up and down this block. It's Sunday, so we do see the occasional Italian family strolling by the lake, but honestly, the place seems rather empty. As if the Italians who live here haven't yet returned from their vacation, or given the heat of the day, maybe they chose to stay home.

I had made a lunch reservation for 12:30 at Locanda 81 -- an eatery that does not usually do lunches except on the weekend. I know nothing about it except what's on the Internet, but it seems to have food that's creative and good, with possibilities that might please even a suspicious Snowdrop.

We sit at a table outside and really, the setting is lovely: shaded and with rose vines climbing to the roof. In the end she opts for her usual pasta... 

... but mine is unusual and fabulous. Porcini, tiny onions, mussels, lemon, parsley. So beautifully delicious.

After lunch (which happens to be right by the bell tower)...

... we walk over to a Gelateria for the obligatory gelato. She sticks with chocolate, but me, I see my Italian favorite -- frutti di bosco. Fruits of the forest. Nothing is as good on that flavor on a cone on a hot summer day. Nothing.

We then crisscross the city to the edge of town... 

... to what is regarded as a major "sight" here -- the Giardini Botanici di Villa Taranto. Sounds Italian? Well, the gardens are essentially Italian, but they were created by a Scottish captain who brought in plants from outside and inside of this region. He willed the gardens to Italy and so upon his death, they were opened to the public. And they are exceptional! Possibly the most stunning Italian gardens I've come across. 

The highlights of August? Certainly the dahlias!

(she tries her hand at taking pictures...)

And water lilies...

(monster lily leaves!)

And so much more!

I must admit we were hot toward the end. There is a bit of climbing and the path appears to circumnavigate the gardens in such a way that it's difficult to cut it short and scoot out halfway. Which perhaps is a good thing: we saw most everything!

(taken by a friendly stranger)

Properly exhausted, we head home. Snowdrop rests, but not for long. Summer has made a full comeback. The pool beckons. For both of us.

Until the big clouds roll in again.

The dinner choice is easy: today and tomorrow (our last days here), we're returning to places which for us were the winners of our stay. Today it's Vecchio Forno dallo Zio Aldo. We started our trip here and my memories of that first evening are precious, despite our enormous tiredness. The food choices? Pasta and pizza, in some combinations of sauce, with and without seafood and of course cheese. 

(She is in an excited phase of planning out a book about misleading advertising. No, really, that's her topic.)

We walk home on familiar paths. She's bouncy. I'm... nostalgic, with a wide smile.

I am determined to get the girl onto a better sleep schedule, but I'm fighting a losing battle here. She resists sleep, perhaps because dinners are always so late (they end well after 9). No matter. We're on a weird schedule here. Travel disrupts, but with such rewards that you switch your focus and let go of mundane concerns. We are in our bedroom by the lake. All is fine in our small corner of the world.

With love...