Lago Maggiore & Lugano, Switzerland

This weekend was the first weekend in IES Milan history that we had no class on Friday. However, IES did offer a trip to Lago Maggiore which I took advantage of.

We met up as a group in the train station, most people decided to travel on their own so only six of us plus Luca (one of the academic advisors) who went. We took a train to Stresa, Italy which is on Lago Maggiore. In Stresa we took a boat to the Borromeo islands. There are three of these islands which were owned by the Borromeos, the ruling family of the area. The first island we went to was Isola Madre (the mother island) which is where the summer place of the Borromeos is. There is a beautiful botanical garden in villa that we got to go through on IES's bill which was really nice. There are peacocks and other pretty birds wandering around the gardens freely (one of the girls with us is scared of birds so that was interesting) and a very old cyprus tree which was sadly depleted in a "tornado" four years ago. However they did rescue it and is held up by supports.

After Isola Madre we went to the Isola dei Pescatori which is named for the fisherman (pescatori) that live there still to this day. We had lunch and I ate a very good whitefish that came from the lake we were on. We wandered the island a little bit, got some gelato, and then headed to the final island: Isola Bella.

Isola Bella is where the main Borromeo estate is and it is huge. We went through the palace on the island as well as some of their gardens. It was really pretty. We had a great time and took a train from Stesa back to Milan.

On Saturday I got up and headed with two of my friends to Lugano, Switzerland which is only one hour away. Lugano is really pretty and a nice distance from Milan. It resides in the Italian part of Switzerland so there was not much of a language barrier (well, no more than we're used to in Italy).

We saw a pretty church first and then headed towards the lake. We took some pictures and then decided to take a "train" tour of the city on this little, cheesy, train. It was pretty fun and took us around all of Lugano which was really nice. After the tour we had lunch and I got a merlot risotto which was huge and delicious.

After lunch we spent some more time wandering around. We almost took a funicolare up one of the hills around but it was more expensive than the cash we had and they did not take cards. We walked along the lake back to the center and then just headed home again. I spent the evening relaxing as I have had a headache the past few days. Overall the two day trips this weekend were successful!