Monday 18th October: Milano

We caught the train to Milan from Arona, a local station. The trains in Italy run on time and are cheap: the hour’s ride to Milan was the equivalent of £8.50 return each. A similar UK journey, London to Huntingdon cheap day return costs £22.00.

However, you can’t expect a perfect service for these prices- so what’s lacking? Well, the carriage windows are usually grubby so you don’t get a good view out. This is perhaps a minor point, except if you don’t know the line. On the return journey, with completely opaque windows in the whole carriage, we couldn’t see the station names to identify when we would arrive at our little station. We plumped for dead reckoning, and got off the train when it stopped at 18:23, its scheduled time for our station. Sigh of relief, it is Arona!

Milan has a fabulous cathedral, faced in white marble, dating from 1386 but only finished in 1805 to 1809 by order of Napoleon. Josephine was keen on marble.

The interior is equally sumptuous with marble patterned floors and rich stained glass windows. San Carlo Borromeo’s tomb is here also, he of big statue fame described in a previous blog. The space inside is enormous and exceeds St Paul’s in London. Our camera isn’t really happy in low light, but the photo will give an idea of the lovely stained glass

The external carvings are of exceptional quality. This one is instantly recognisable as David and Goliath. Ambitious lad, David, always looking to get a head.

This is the Galleria, between the cathedral and La Scala, all exclusive shops and restaurants, and excellent for poser-watching. We bought two overpriced but enormous gelati (ice creams) around the corner from the Galleria. The vendor kept piling the ice cream on top of the small cones. I’d eaten half of mine when the head of the cone fell off, obviously not structurally up to the mega weight of the ice cream and vigourous licking, and Jane simply couldn’t finish hers, so half the quantity at half the price would have suited us much better.

With ice cream remains in the bin, we visited La Scala, the most famous opera house in the world. La Scala itself isn’t open apart from for performances, but the museum is. It is full of memorabilia of operas and opera performers going back to the opening in 1778. Visitors are also allowed to look into the auditorium from several of the theatre boxes that connect with the museum. This was the undoubted highlight, looking in on that famous theatre with its’ 3,000 seats, especially so because a rehearsal for Carmen was taking place. We stayed much longer than permitted and a curator did ask us to move on eventually on the very reasonable basis that you should be paying around €100 to watch an opera and not €4 museum entrance charge. However, no photography allowed, so it’s only a snap of an outside poster as a memento of our visit.

Friday 15th Oct: Como and Lugano

The day dawned bright and sunny, but hazy. It will burn off, we thought. But it didn’t, it got hazier, so no big views although the lakes were beautiful, atmospherically beautiful in the mist. We stopped for lunch at Menaggio on lake Como where we sat out at a café in the old square.

We left lake Como at Menaggio and cut across to Lake Lugano, the northern shore of which we followed until we crossed into Switzerland, and thence to the upmarket town of Lugano, The guidebook said that parking is difficult here: it was right, but we did eventually find a multi-storey at a price in keeping with the prices on the high street. The town is very chic, full of designer shops and exclusive restaurants, a sort of Harrods-on-the-lake. The photo is of the town’s lake frontage, but doesn’t convey the posh image of the town centre.

In a way, more our scene: a bunch of crows, opportunists as always for food. These are hooded crows quite common in Italy but only found in the North-East and Scotland in the UK.

We encountered huge traffic jams leaving Lugano and then all the way back to the Italian border. We also experienced traffic congestion having crossed back into Italy, but it kept moving. We were pleased to get back to the ‘van, late, after a long day out, and glad we hadn’t chosen a campsite on one of the more famous lakes because Lake Orta, where we are, is much less congested, and every bit as beautiful.

Wednesday 13th Oct: A Small Village

The guidebook’s starred locations don’t always yield the most interesting visits. Armena, which isn’t mentioned anywhere, stands in the hills behind Lake Orta, a fairly ordinary sort of place, with a nice church. Rounding a corner, we came across the communal wash-house, dated 1929. It was in a functioning state of repair, but presumably now made redundant by washing machines. Hand-washing drudgery it may have been, but they’ve lost the communal gathering and all that chatting and gossip.

A statue of a Saint by the church, quite usual, and as we approached it appeared that there were Coke cans and bottles by his feet. Was this indeed St Eco, the Patron Saint of re-cycling? Disappointingly, the cans and bottles turned out to be devotional candles.

Back to the site, and there’s a lady swimming in the lake who convinces Jane that the water’s quite warm. “Gets to be 24, 25 degrees in Aug, early Sept.”, she says. "Yes, but it’s now mid-October", I’m thinking. But Jane is convinced: I’m not, and here’s the picture to prove it! Jane was in for about 15 minutes and said it was invigoratingggg....

Orta Revisited

Being camped so close to the town of Orta we have walked in many time since our arrival. The walk to the town entails 10 minutes on the main road path, never the most ambient of places to stroll, and then 20 minutes of charming pathway most of which follows the lake shore.

The town itself is a series of narrow cobbled streets with a few shops, opening onto a square every now and then with more shops. The discoloured plaster adds to the charm. Hold on! Is that Padre Pio I can see peering out of the mottled brown wall facing us?

Today there’s a market in the main square and just off the square, in a courtyard, is a blacksmith who is making wrought iron goods. He’s in the process of fashioning a key ring to order in the shape of a leaf. It’s great spectator entertainment and safe enough even with the forge going full blast. I wonder if the blacksmith did a Risk Assessment?

We noticed a young couple immaculately dressed in evening clothes of yesteryear, romantically embracing on a jetty. Newly weds, maybe, or going to a ball on the island? It turned out to be a photo-shoot and unfortunately we didn’t find out for which publication.

The island referred to above is the island of St Giulio, half a kilometre from Orta. We went by water taxi for a visit. The church was magnificent, old and ornate, but no photos. The tomb of St Guilio is in the church. He came to the island in the 4th century and rid it of dragons & snakes: a 4th century Rentokil job. A cobbled road runs around the perimeter of the island, but on the inside of the buildings so there are few perspectives of the lake or the island. Actually, the prettiest view of the island is from the main square in Orta town, where the quays are.

Thursday 7th Oct: Lake Maggiore

Lake Maggiore is the longest of the Italian lakes, the northern end of which is in Switzerland. We drove along a stretch of the shore closest to Lake Orta where we're staying. This is also one of the most glam bits. We stopped first at Stresa, holiday venue of Queen Victoria, and took a lakeside walk opposite the picturesque Borromean islands. The island featured in the photo hosted Mussolini and Napoleon (not at the same time!) and can be visited, but we’ll need to come back.

Along the front at Stresa were a number of memorials to Italians killed in both World Wars. There were also monuments and statues commemorating military actions and it is interesting to note that none related to the period of Mussolini’s dictatorship. The poignant statue shown is of a soldier of the Alpine Corps in the First World War and his mule, when Italy was one of the allies.

Now on to the Colosso di San Carlone that overlooks the lake. This is a gigantic bronze statue of St. Carlo Borromeo. He was made Archbishop of Milan at the age of 22 in 1550. Including the base, the statue is 115ft tall and was completed in 1697. It can be climbed from the inside and is the second largest statue in the world where this is possible: the largest is New York’s Statue of Liberty. In fact, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Bartholdi, studied this effigy when planning the statue for which Eiffel, of Tower fame, supplied the structure.

Sacro Monte di Orta

The hilltop between the campsite and the town of Orta is a wooded park that looks down over the lake giving lovely views in all directions. This shot of the island in the lake is a good example.

The most impressive and unusual feature of this park is the collection of 20 temples it contains, each different in shape and size, built during a period of 90 years from the mid 17th century. They are beautifully and ornately constructed, as the photo of one shows.

The temples are dedicated to the life of St Francis, and each temple depicts a different scene from his life. This is the amazing part: these scenes are shown in wall and ceiling illustrations, and also life-size painted terracotta models, literally hundreds of them in total. UNESCO recognised the park’s unique quality 7 years ago by granting it World Heritage Status. The next photo shows a scene where St Francis is meeting the King. Observe that each model is individually cast, and has lifelike expression and movement as well as a superbly detailed painted finish.

Example 2 below, from another temple, even surpasses this with full-size horses and a man climbing a pole. St Francis is just around the corner being persecuted. It’s so realistic that you want to shout and put some backbone into St Francis: “Don’t put up with it, Frankie, hit him back!” Unfortunately, some of the paint has peeled to reveal the terracotta, but that’s still not bad after 350ish years in a damp atmosphere.

The Italian Lakes

Last Thursday we left Interlaken and arrived at Lake Orta in Italy, near the town of Orta. Never heard of it? We hadn’t, either: it’s one of the beautiful smaller lakes near Lake Maggiore. We have a pitch right on the lakeside with a lovely view. The only downside is that the caravan portaloo nearly rolled itself into the lake, just about where Jane is sitting. Fortunately I grabbed it. Imagine having to hire a fisherman to trawl it out from the depths, assuming you could explain in Italian the equivalent of…”yes, that’s right, mate, it’s me bog. It’s down there somewhere…”

The town of Orta is a gem. It’s right on the lake and is full of old buildings, so inevitably attracts the tourists but it’s not gone tacky. Notice a few big coats, as the weather was changeable.

While we were in the square at Orta, a wedding party appeared and boarded the tourist transport back to one of the posh hotels on the edge of town. Puts a totally new meaning on: “did you see the bride’s train?”

We also came across a small courtyard dedicated to Padre Pio. He was sanctified by the Vatican in 2003, having led an austere life and had miracles attributed to him. He wasn’t a local lad, and the reason for the courtyard being full of Padre Pio tribute items was that a miracle was claimed to have occurred in the very house attached to the courtyard. An image of Padre Pio revealed itself in the peeling paintwork of a blank upper floor recess, with a photo as evidence. Below is my photo of the same peeling paintwork. You need to be focused on the area on the right of the window, and then decide where he is, like one of those puzzle pictures you did as a child.

Monday 27th: The Capital, Bern

The 26 cantons that make up the Swiss Confederation each has its own parliament, constitution and courts, so there is a great deal of regional autonomy. Over the top of this is the Federal Council and Parliament that is based in Bern, making it the federal capital. Bern is less than an hour by train from Interlaken and has World Heritage status because its centre is so well preserved, so it seemed a natural for a day out on the rover tickets. Picture 1 below is one of these elegant old streets, all arcaded, in fact the most arcaded city in the world.

It also must also be the fast lunch capital of Switzerland. See the guy scoffing a roll, bottom right hand corner, well practically every part of the arcades in this street had a fast-food stall or shop. Hundreds of folks were buying lunch and eating it in the street either standing up or sat on the step-up from the road to the arcades.
At the end of the street is the Zytglogge or clock tower, with mechanical figures performing on the hour. The original clock tower was made in 1218, of wood, but burnt down in 1405 and was replaced with the present one in stone. The wooden version was also a prison for a time for prostitutes that made a living servicing the clergy.

Bern’s emblem is the bear, and the statue shows a knight with a small bear at his feet holding a gun. As interesting as it may be to speculate on what the bear is intending to shoot, it has to be admitted that one’s eyes are drawn to the knight- they don’t make cod-pieces like that these days!

They take their bears seriously, and have made a bear park next to the remains of the old bear-bating pits by the river. There’s even a section of the river for the bears to swim in, so the wealthy with riverside gardens must have to occasionally contend with a bear lumbering up the lawn. This is also a pretty part of the town as the photo shows, the bridge being one of the oldest in the country. It is now a des res area but was formerly a self-contained district of craftsmen and dockworkers with their own language incomprehensible to other Bernese.

The last, rather austere, photo is of the HQ of the Swiss National Bank. It stands next to the Parliament building and symbolises the wealth of the Swiss nation created by the diligence of its inhabitants. This is the somewhat smug official Swiss picture. But there is another story: vast sums were made during the last war. For example, the Bank was buying Nazi gold right up to the very end knowing full well that these transactions were prolonging the misery of the war and that the gold was stolen, some of it in the most unimaginably awful ways.