Lepod's Blog

We found this place at a bargain rate, I suspect because of the recession. It was only about an hour from Florence, but very much in the country. We stocked up on food from a local villaqe and blobbed out for three days, sitting by the pool. On the last night we had an excellent meal at a local Osteria in a tiny village not far away, next to us was a family with a small child of about 6, it was notable that the child ate exactly the same food as everyone else, and his behaviour was impecable. We noticed this all over Europe, quite a difference from NZ! Anyway, the next day we jumped on the Autostrada and headed for northern Italy and the lakes district. We ended up at a tiny historic village on Lake Orta. There was a medieval town on an island in the lake, and it was immensly charming. Normally a ski resort in winter, and a lake resort in summer, at this time of year there were very few people apart from us and the locals. Here’s a bit of a blurb about the place:

From The Independent: Lake Orta, one of the smallest and least-known of northern Italy’s sub-Alpine lakes, is a place for sublime moments. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who visited the lake in May 1882 and believed that the experience changed his life forever, inscribed the date “von Orta an” (“from Orta onwards”) as a preface to his masterpiece Thus Spake Zarathustra. Other 19th-century writers enchanted by its quiet beauty include the French novelist Honoré de Balzac, who wrote rapturously of this “grey pearl in a green jewel-box”, and Robert Browning. His poem “By the Fireside”, which contemplates the beauty of a setting where “Alp meets heaven in snow”, describes the lakeside village of Pella as a luminous “speck of white… in the evening-glow”.

It was one of my favourite parts of Italy, here’s some pictures:

We had a very pleasant stay here, then we were on our way to France via Switzerland. Neither of us had been to the Italian part of Switzerland before, but we were looking forward to entering a somewhat more orderly, less chaotic country. I envisaged a leisurely drive on the fantastic Swiss roads to Bern. Unfortunately, there was a two hour traffic jam as there was so much traffic trying to enter one of the big tunnels, and then there were a heap of road works, so we arrived in Bern fairly late. Still, it was nice to be in Bern, and we went out for a meal, and ended up in a restaurant/bar with an Australian theme. Oddly, the bar manager/waitress did not speak any english, or even australian. Here’s a couple of pictures from Bern:

Next day, we avoided the motorways and had a lovely drive through the Swiss and French countrysides until we reached a little village in the Burgundy region, and called it a day. Next day we were off to see Guédelon, a fortress castle in Puisaye, being built using solely 13th century techniques as an experiment to see how it was done.