Today we planned to visit some islands in Lago Maggiore. We began with a 9:15 boat (ferry) from Intra which stopped at a number of places on its route. The Borromean Islands, Isola Bella, Isola Madre and Isola Superiore dei Pescatori are only a short distance from shore but have their own unique characters.
During the trip we also visited the towns of Pallanza, Baveno and Stressa, all towns whose names I knew from the stories told to me by my grandparents of their time in Italy. The towns also had their own characters, even though they all had typical aspects of Piemonte. We walked, and walked, and walked and walked. It was a relief at times the get back on a boat and have a rest. The trips on the boats were a joy. The water was calm and green-blue, we were surrounded by vegetation covered mountains that were dotted with picturesque villages and towns. Of course we had to spend a couple of hours in Sressa as the boats didn't travel between 12:30 and 2:15 - lunchtime in Italy. So we had a pleasant lunch in the piazza, surrounded by the ambience of an Italian town, Frances had penne with a tomato sauce with swordfish and eggplant, while I had linguini with prawns and zucchini in a tomato sauce - delicious.
Our last stop turned out to be quite an unexpected surprise. We traveled across the lake to Santa Caterina, expecting another Piemonte village. We were staggerd to arrive at Santa Caterina del Sasso, which is a hermitage and chapel standing on a sheer rock overlooking the lake, which was restored by the Province of Varese and is still use by the Dominicans.We didn't arrive back at our hotel in Intra until around 6pm, completely exhausted. However after a short rest, we headed back into town for some dinner before crashing for the night.
