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Stresa, Italy

The complimentary breakfast was even more spartan than the previous hotel and the coffee a minor improvement but still lacking.  You can buy packaged croissants in the supermarket – the Rome BB had loads and they are tragic, kind of floppy, soggy yet dry and the taste is simply old package bad food flavour.  This hotel sets the table with one on each plate and thats your treat – if you want more food then there are some dry rolls, jams, bland cheese and salami and watery ham – all of the later which are standard continental breakfast.  It has a couple of cereals too, and fresh fruits – kiwifruit, pears or oranges.  Needless to say I do not eat the sad excuse for pastries and chew my way through dry bread and cheese and cold cuts. Blah.  At least its a good incentive not to over indulge in the morning! Today we started off with a slow internet doing some research on our second half of the holiday which is not prebooked or detail planned.  Unfortunately the weather is not looking good for Switzerland which is next on the proposed agenda and when we look at the satelite map no other place is great either!  We explored rejigging our draft itinerary and coming back to the Alps when they were visible but its just looking too expensive and time consuming to back track.  We hope that there is change in the next couple of days. We headed out for lunch fairly late and had trouble finding something inspiring. Vernon has actually confessed to being a bit tired of pizza and pasta as the variations are so limited and the flavours to be frank are nice but not out of this world.  The faithful man has confirmed that my Italian cooking is superior to what we have had here in the run of the mill place.  How sweet – or peace loving!  Basic cost is not cheap either when you consider the food value involved – around 9 euro average which is around $15 for a big plate of carbohydrates.  Finally settled on a cheapy place with 5 euro asparagus risotto and 5 euro lasagne.  Mmm let me say you get what you pay for, although not that much worse really and it filled the gap.  We just meandered a bit more and I managed to find a hair salon which sold decent shampoo to which I added a hair cut as my hair seems to have grown doubly quick (surely we haven’t been on holiday that long?)  It was a bit scary getting it cut without being able to give explicit instructions on how to cut my hair which many find tricky.  The stylist was really serious mature woman with an unusual technique but I came away looking respectable thankfully – $24 euro which is not too bad for a lake resort place – cheaper than at home. The atmosphere here is lovely whether its in the day or night. As mentioned in my previous blog entry its so lush and tidy that we clearly feel more at home with our environment.  The grand hotels and some old vila’s add to the feeling of being somewhere special by a lake resort town.  The occasional european luxury sports car has one imagining royalty or the elite who keep the expensive places ticking over.  It even smells like ‘wealthy’ if you catch my drift? The night walk back to the hotel has its own special magic.  Even though there are snowy mountain tops clearly visible it is not cold here as you may expect winds to come down.  The breezes are weird they kind of swirl – sometimes warm and balmy -sometimes cooler but never biting or unpleasant.  In the evening the old fashioned roses are particularly fragrant and the light from the lamps and hotel chandeliers create a very sophisticated mood as you stroll along the lake front and hear water lapping and happy chatter and music floating by.   

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