Day 14 – Saturday 4 June 2016

Rain, rain & more rain, it is bucketing down. Some of our fellow travellers had a wet night, water leaked through the ceiling, one woman waking with water dripping on her face. No, it wasn’t the rain, somebody had fallen asleep in the bath with the water running a floor above. They had to be moved to a dry room at 1.30am in the morning, they still couldn’t get much sleep as someone was holding a party in the room two doors along from them. They looked very tired this morning.

We gathered in the hotel lobby after breakfast & walked in the rain with our umbrellas the short distance to the wharf to board our boat out onto Lake Maggiore to the island of Isola Bella to see the Borromeo Palace built on the island. The island is around 400 metres off the shore & about 2km from our hotel. Fortunately the boat was covered & we all stayed dry the 10 minutes it took to motor out to Isola Bella.

The Palace is a very large old building owned by an extremely rich Italian family, the Borromeo family. Construction of the palace started in 1632 & the overall design theme was for the island to end up resembling a ship. The palace was built for his wife Isabella. The palace is an amazingly large & elaborate home, full of priceless works of art, furniture & 6 large tapestries. The tapestries date from the 16^th Century & made by Flemish weavers, it was told by our guide that it took 8 women a total of 10 years to complete each tapestry, woven with silk, gold & silver thread. Our guide took us on a tour of 25 rooms on the lower floor of the palace, the upper levels are still used by the Borromeo family in summer. Each of the rooms are sumptuous with marble walls & marble floors & intricately painted ceilings, designed to look as though the ceilings are decorated with raised stucco. They are flat & the painters were very clever indeed. The last rooms we visited were the grottos under the palace. These rooms are decorated with volcanic rock, all different types & colours of rock in interesting designs & patterns on the ceiling, walls & floor. The grottos were the only place that we could take photos in. Apparently the motto of the Borromeo family is “Humility” & is written in Latin in varying places around the Palace & the gardens. We didn’t see any evidence of that, it is all ostentatious & over the top showing of wealth.

The palace gardens are full of exotic plants & statues, even containing a large bird aviary with lots of small colourful parrots. We walked around in our rain ponchos holding our umbrellas as the rain continued to pour down. We were fairly dry & it wasn’t cold. The assortment of white peacocks roaming the gardens were an added point of interest with their sharp piercing cries. The gardens are laid out nicely, with different areas for different purposes, we took it easy on the steps as they were a little slippery in the rain. The gardens must be even more fabulous on a sunny day. We wound our way out through the gift shops (funny how all the tourist attractions seem to do that) before boarding our boat back (in the rain) to our hotel. We had a short break & a quick bite to eat (in the rain) before getting organised for our afternoon garden tour.

Thankfully the rain eased & was starting to clear as we boarded the coach for the 15 minute drive to the 16 hectares of gardens of Villa Taranto, established by a Scottish sea captain, Neil McEacharn in 1931 in the lakeside village of Pallanza. The garden has more than 20,000 plants & more than 80,000 blooming bulbs, with over 15,000 border plants through the various flowerbeds. A long well-tended path winds for around 7km to show off the many delightful aspects of the garden. One of the highlights was seeing a pond of giant water lilies from the upper reaches of the Amazon River, these water lilies have huge leaves, they must be 2 metres across. There are lots of unusual plants in these gardens, some very colourful & spectacular. There are a lot of water features as well as framed arches of different shapes & sizes, it has been designed very well. We are thankful the rain cleared, we were wearing hats & sunglasses, a stark contrast to this morning’s weather, is was a real pleasure taking our time to slowly enjoy the many delights of this wonderful garden. There were even some native Australian plants with a few different species of bottlebrush, wattle & grevillea making an appearance in places around the garden. After the long walk Ron treated himself to a gelato while waiting to depart back to our hotel for a well-deserved rest.

Villa Taranto was not part of our tour but Brian (our tour director) organized it through Insight Tours because we are such wonderful (ha, ha) Aussies, we haven’t winged about Mother Nature’s wet deal on this tour. Brian reckons that he has been working as a tour director for about 32 years but he cannot remember having so many wet days this time of the year.

Dinner tonight was over on Fisherman’s Island (Isola dei Pescatori), next to Isola Bella, at the Belvedere restaurant, so again the short walk to the boat then the short trip out to the island, a little closer than Isola Bella. We sat outdoors under cover right on the lakefront, a magnificent view & a superb dinner – antipasto was one of the best prosciutto I have ever tasted along with some very tasty, sweet fruit. Entrée was a fish ravioli, I have never had fish in ravioli previously & it was a different & very pleasant burst of flavour. The main course was fresh trout from the lake & was superb, served with delicious small potatoes & beans. Desert was a cinnamon infused creamy mousse, sweet & tasty. We enjoyed another nice chat with our fellow travellers & washed the meal down with a very nice local red wine, grown from about 25 kms away. Back on the boat at 9pm then once ashore we had a nice long slow stroll along the waterfront before getting back to our hotel around 10pm, a perfect balmy Italian night – and it is still light, difficult adjusting to the very long days.