Thousandapologies

Last Friday, Danish and I left for another trip to the Italian Alps to visit Danish’s friend Agnese. Like last year, Agnese had invited us to stay over with her and her family and of course we were eager to visit that beautiful town Baceno again. So, we left for Aachen on Friday morning 10.30 for the rest of our train journey and arrived safely in Domodossola at 20.15, a grand total of 9.45 hours of travelling. We were picked up by Agnese after which we headed for Baceno to have some well-deserved warm food, and to meet her friend Laura. Again we stayed in the big family house with Agnese’s grandmother and at 23.00 we were so tired we wanted to go to bed. Also, we had to get up early next morning so Agnese could drop us off near Lago Maggiore before going to work. The first day, Danish and I spend travelling across this huge lake to the beautiful town of Loccarno in Switzerland. Unfortunately, Agnese had made a mistake with the boat schedule and therefore time in Loccarno was limited. The boat trip was nice, although the two hours were a bit too much for me, but the train ride back from Loccarno to Domodossola was amazingly beautiful. The train went up in the Swiss and Italian Alps and meandered accross the valleys, crossing mountain streams along the way and providing us with a splendid view.

At arrival in Domodossola, Agnese was waiting for us, with another surprise, a trip to a house her father built up at 1500m height. This trip turn out to be quite a lot of fun, because half way we had to unexpectely change vehicles to what had been a nice jeep some time ago. This jeep, with battered windshield and loose front bumper, gave us a humpty-bumpty ride up along a half asphalted road, towards a tunnel that turned out to be for water transportation, not for cars. After a wee stop to turn on the lights, and some questions to Agnese to what would happen if another car would come from the opposite direction (we didn’t like her answer), we continued to a huge dam and had to walk the final bit up to the house. The views from the cottage, but also from the lake close by, were breathtaking and I found myself in a rather contemplative mood. As we got back to Agnese’s grandmother, Italian dinner was served, my favourite kind of food, and in the evening we travelled back to Verbana to stay with Agnese’s aunt, very close to the Lago Maggiore.

The next day Agnese had planned an Island trip for us, which we enjoyed a lot. We went Island hopping across three Islands in Lago Maggiore: Isola Madre, Isola Superiore, and Isola Bella. These three Islands were owned by a wealthy Italian family but were now also opened to the public, a little bit too many tourists (especially Dutch ones, ugh), but really nice and the day went by just too fast. In the evening, Danish cooked us a splendid Indian dinner and for coffee we went over to family friends of the Cordas, where we enjoyed real Italian hospitality; even though we didn’t understand most of the conversations (finally I  start understanding at least some Italian), we still felt part of the company, and it was an evening well spent. Such a shame that it went by so fast though, as before we knew it, we were already travelling back to the Netherlands…