Rail Tour Through the Alps

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)

Tuesday - Wednesday, September 6 - 7
Baveno, Italy on Lago Maggiore and home

On the agenda for this morning was a trip to Cantine Garrone in the tiny village of Oira out in the hinterlands. The establishment is a combination winery / cheese maker's / bed & breakfast where they not only grow the grapes , but also raise sheep from which they make their own cheese. I'm not much of a wine drinker or cheese eater, so I took a pass while Jenny did the trip with the rest of the group.

Jenny's wine and cheese tasting excursion to Oira

1. Rugged wine country	2. Village of Oira	4. Statuary in church	5. Statuary in church
6. Village of Oira	3. Oira church
	8. Home and headquarters of Cantine Garrone	9. Ceramic tile signboard	10. Scale for weighing cheese
7. Bees and butterflies pollinating
11 Grape arbor	12. Kettle	13. Churn	14. Storing the cheese to age

Jenny had a particular interest in this excursion, since she herself works in a small, and highly praised cheese dairy in Vermont. The coach wound its way up the mountain into rugged mountain terrain (Photo #1) into the Ossola region that has been wine country for centuries. After about a half hour, they reached the tiny mountain village of Oira. The village was small enough that the tour group had a significant impact on its population. It didn't take long to admire the lovely surroundings, including the town church with some truly lovely statuary and decoration (Photos #3, 4, & 5). Jenny, says, "The tasting itself, after we had admired the view and looked around inside the church and the dairy, included 3 kinds of wine, 2 cheeses (cow and goat), homemade sausage, local honey, and 2 traditional pastries, with the owner's sons serving, and selling wine afterward, but only on request, no pitch.  One of us tourists checked out the youngest, and said, 'Shouldn't that kid be in school?'". Some of the cheese making equipment and facilities (Photos # 10, 12, 13, & 14) held a particular fascination to her in comparison to what was familiar to her in her own daily work.

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While Jenny was off on her expedition, I decided to poke around the town and see what there was to see. Jenny had seen a flier in the hotel lobby about a Granite Museum in town, which she thought might interest me. The mountains rise directly up from the lakefront, and there a number of granite quarries in the area. So I trekked up the steep side road to take a peek at the museum. I'm not sure what I expected, but there was not much to write home about or take pictures of. The museum consisted of a small room with some rocks and gravel on display. In the same vicinity was the Church of Saints Gervaso and Protaso. It looked a little bedraggled and worse for wear on the outside, but the inside was lovely and charming (Photo #17).

I had picked up a map of Baveno from the hotel desk, and it indicated nearby a "panorama" indicated by an icon of a camera. Well, that might be nice to see. So I set off along the shore of Lake Maggiore (I guess a loose translation might be "Great Lake".) There was a nice lakefront walk with plantings and art (Photos #15 & 16). At Via Milnese, I left the shore and started walking inland. Well, like our own Great Lakes, Lago Maggiore was glacier-dug, but much more recently. And as at Lake Como, the terrain went precipitously uphill the moment I left the shore. The temperature was pushing 90, and I was puffing and sweating in no time.

I walked past an interesting Medieval-looking fortress (Photo #19) on my way up the hill that looked at once to be both a ruin (Note the left hand damaged tower.), yet in remarkably good repair in its stonework. The explanation revealed itself when I got a better look at it from higher up on the road. It was indeed a ruin, but the stonework had been rehabilitated, and used to form one wall of a new apartment block (Photo #20). A very clever idea at first concept. But all the people living their would have to observe their magnificent view of the lake through those narrow little slit windows.

Reaching the indicated site of the panorama was a very strenuous climb, but when I finally got to the place indicated on the map, there was no sign of a panorama. It was a residential neighborhood, so I tried to make inquiries in my nonexistent Italian. With gestures, mime, and pointing at the map, I asked the local inhabitants where this vantage point might be. They had no idea. I finally found a rusted sign with the same camera icon and "Panorama" text. Evidently there had been a view before a significant building boom. And the only view of the lake I had was through a tiny gap in the foliage. So as not to have wasted my arduous trip, I dutifully took Photo #21.

I walked back down to the lake, grabbed a pizza for lunch at a lakeside outdoor restaurant, and went back to the hotel to wait for Jenny..

Photo #24 shows the Grand Hotel Dino's beachfront from outside the fence intended to keep the riffraff out. (Didn't work. We got in.) Jenny wanted to go swimming (Photo #22). So we changed and went out to the dock and jumped in. The water was lovely, but we soon discovered a problem. The surface of the dock was a good 18 inches above the water level, and it was very difficult to get back up onto it. There was a rope ladder, but as soon as one put weight on one of the rungs, it would swing under the dock, leaving no way to pull one's self up. I eventually swam to shore, and discovered the rocky bottom and uncertain footing I mentioned in the previous page of this travelogue. I sort of crawled out on all fours, and then went back out to the dock to haul Jenny out by her arm. No fun.

We changed back into street clothes in time to join the tour group for a short coach ride to the neigboring town of Stresa for some shopping and sightseeing. (Well, others went shopping. As for me, I'd sooner be in a dragon's colon. Jenny did use the opportunity to find a post office to send a package to her cousins in Italy and save the international postage.) We strolled up and down the main drag an ogled some of the classy hotels. The Hotel Regina (Photo #23) and the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees (Photo #26) are, I think, what the Grand Hotel Dino was striving for, and fell short of the mark. We boldly trespassed onto the grounds of the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees, and poked around. They included some truly impressive and classy gardens and statuary (Photos #27 through 30). We impersonated guests and strolled about, and were not set upon by dogs. Photo #25 is a building on the lakefront street that caught Jenny's eye because of the different window treatments on all three floors.

The group reconvened at the coach, rode back to Baveno and thence to a wharf, where we boarded a chartered boat to a farewell dinner at a lovely restaurant on the Isola dei Pescatori (Isle of Fishermen, Photo #31). We dined outdoors in the growing dusk, in good company, and attended by a couple of sociable cats that wandered freely amongst the diners. I packed and turned in early, as I had to catch my taxi to the airport in Milan at 3:00AM. The flights went without incident, and Larry was there as scheduled to pick me up at JFK. Nice vacation..