Friday, 20 September 2024, Milan to Stresa: Grand Hotel des Îles Boromées

Written 14 November 2024

Friday morning, we had to have our luggage ready (just inside our rooms) at 7 am. Breakfast started at 7 am also, and we then met in the lobby at 8 am for an 8:15 am departure by gigantic, black luxury bus to Lake Como. Seating was assigned (and rotated daily so that everybody got to sit in the "best" spots), but there was so much space left over that anyone who wanted could have a row of seats to themselves. Hotel minions brought our luggage down to the bus, and driver Giuseppi oversaw the loading of it.

It took us about 45 minutes to get settled in the bus and to get out of Milan. On our way out, we traveled along Via Alessandro Volta, which passed through the Porta Volta, once a city gate of Milan, part of the 16th century Spanish walls.

As we passed through I got the photo at the right of the panel you can see to the right of gate's two openings. The busts look definitely Roman, and the inscription below is in Latin, so the Spanish must have incorporated elements from the old Roman walls.

Just beyond the gate, again on the right, I got this shot of the Caselli Volta, the building that served as the gate's toll booth. Most images of it on the internet do not include the colorful objects d'art (cartoon whales?) along its roofline. I hope they're just temporary.

Straight ahead of us, the street changed names and then ended at the gates of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, actually only the city's second largest. Manzoni and Verdi are both buried there.

We also passed this impressive building clearly labeled "Museum," but I never figured out what it was a museum of. Design, maybe?

The horsechestnuts that lined he streets were looking really, really burned, probably from acid rain. One of them was even blooming desperately (in September!) from branch ends with new green leaves.

Anyway, we were soon out of the flat land and had lake views. I'm not sure if this is already Lake Como or another that we passed on the way.

Tour director Danny told us along the way that

• Milan means "middle of the flat land."
• The weather here is often gray in the morning but sunny in the afternoon.
• Milan is the "fast town" in Italy, the speedy one.
• Greater Milan has a population as large as Switzerland's
• Lake Como is very deep, 1300 feet. It never freezes.
• Below 10,000 feet of altitude is pre-Alps; above that is Alps.
• Most of these houses we saw along the shore are air B&Bs; the family might live on the top floor and rent an apartment or two below.
• The villages along there hire flagmen in season to control traffic such that two tour buses never meet in narrow spots in the road.

Lake Como is shaped like an inverted capital Y. We passed through the town of Como, at the southern tip of the western arm, but continued up the western shoreline to Tremezzo, where we stopped for a self-guided tour of the Villa Carlotta, a large house with extensive gardens. The lake is so deep (second deepest in Europe outside Norway), and therefore contains such a mass of water, that it has a moderating effect on the climate, so the gardens feature olives, figs, citrus, palm trees, etc., that one wouldn't expect to find so far north.

Tremezzo's other claim to fame is that it is where Mussolini was was caught just before he reached Switzerland (and was killed on the spot), but we were there just for the villa.

As you can see, the villa stood a long ways above the level of the road, where we left the bus and stopped to admire the fountain shown in the right-hand photo. As we left the bus I spotted a mallard and a coot on the lake, and a flight of cormorants passed overhead.

To get up there, we were given the choice of climbing all those stone steps beyond the fountain or (my choice) of turning right and following a long, upward-sloping path full of hairpin turns that wound through the gardens. We were only shown the third option—the glass-walled elevator to the left—when it was time to come back down.

One of the first plantings that caught my eye, and which proved to be widely used throughout the grounds, was this vine with slightly variegated leaves and long, rigid, pointed seed pods all over it. A little research revealed that it was actually Trachelospermum jasminoides, the very same "confederate jasmine" that's planted all over Tallahassee (for example, on the arbor behind the swimming pool at Westminster Oaks before they tore it down). It flowers profusely and is very fragrant, but I don't think I've ever seen it in fruit before!

Farther up the path, we passed this lovely lawn bordered by colorful flower beds, palms, conifers, and even an agave! Many of the bushes that weren't in bloom were azaleas, which would take their turn in the spring. I also saw lots of camelias in bud.

At the top of this bank is a collection of desert plants—"cacti" that are actually euphorbs, real cacti, Spanish needles (yucca), xerophytic legumes—and on the other side of the path, a patch of red-flowered begonias.

In the right-hand photo, a rock garden featuring not just riotously flowering plants but several with exceptional colorful foliage! Only one of those two adjacent red patches at the right is in flower.

Near the top was this pine tree heavily bedecked with staghorn ferns. I don't know whether they hang there year round or whether the gardeners take them in during the coldest months.

Finally, from the villa's terrace, we had this wonderful view over the western arm of the lake.

Now it's open as a museum. Rooms on the top floor are furnished with period furniture, but we never got beyond the two lower floors, which serve as a museum of the many art works accumulated by the owners.

The owners loved art, so they had replicas made of their favorites to decorate the villa. Here are Terpsichore and Magdalene, both by by Antonio Canova. The Magdalene is a marble replica by an unknown artist. Terpsichore is the artist's plaster model.

Canova's Cupid and Psyche is a marble replica made by Adamo Tadolini. The owner before Princess Marianne was a great patron of Canova's and owned several originals, but those in the villa today are replicas.

One room's ceiling was painted in this "grotesque" pattern, a style I can definitely take or leave.

At the left here is a reproduction of an aquatint of the villa by Johanes Ruff after a drawing by Louis Arthur Rolin. The image dates from the mid-19th century, shortly before it became Villa Carlotta.

At the right is a case of miniatures (only one of many), all commissioned copies of larger paintings—the 19th-century equivalent, I guess, of all the digital photos I bring home from visits to art museums.

In addition to the miniature paintings, we saw many cases full of plaster replicas of cameos.

Back outside, we gathered with the rest of the group at the appointed time and place near this quaint fern grotto. The back wall was a solid cascade of maidenhair fern, and one pink bromeliad sat in a pot atop the pole supporting the chain that kept up from getting too close.

Some walked back down to the shore, but I took the glass-walled elevator. At the bottom we boarded this private motor launch for the five-minute trip across the lake to Bellagio, the little town at the end of the peninsula between the two arms of the lake.

The reason the lake has two arms is that the rock of the promontory where Bellagio sits is so hard that it split the glacier that was gouging out the lake bed, causing it to gouge out two diverging arms rather than continuing straight south. The name "Bellagio" comes from the Latin for "two lakes."

I asked about the lake's commercial fishery and was told that it's very small, just sufficieint to supply the local hotels and restaurants.

After making sure we all knew the landmarks that would guide us back to our boat later, Danny turned us loose to forage for lunch. He had recommended the restaurant in the Hotel Suisse, and since several of us had said it sounded good, he called ahead and made us reservations.

At the left here is the lake-front walk in Bellagio, lined with upscale shops. As we strolled along, checking it out, we passed this appetizing delivery of fat, fresh porcini mushrooms, being brought to our very restaurant!

Among the items offered for sale in shop windows were these ducks, turtles, owls, and other items that seemed to be made of lake pebbles encased in clear acrylic.

Another window featured the amber items shown at the right here. Others displayed souvenir silver spoons and jewelry made of silver, gold, and coral.

At the restaurant, I ordered lake whitefish with tomatoes and porcini mushrooms. It took the form of filets rolled into turbans around the tomatoes and mushrooms. Each filet was set on top of a slice of polenta. Zucchini, green beans, tomato, roasted potato, and slice of grilled fennel on the side.

David choose pasta with a meat ragu, also with porcini.

The most spectacular dish the restaurant served (which was ordered by at least half the people there) was actually made in a large wheel of Parmesan cheese. We had seen it on the way to our table, draped with a napkin to keep dusk and flies out. The top surface had been sliced off and a hollow carved in the cheese. For each pair of servings, the waiter wheeled the cheese to the table, dumped in a steaming bowl of cooked fettucine and hot cream, and proceeded to stir and toss it vigorously, scraping semimelted Parmesan from the sides into the mix as he went. After he divided the resulting mix between two plates, he offered optional black pepper and shaved truffles. Here he is preparing it for a nearby table. Everyone else was photographing it, too.

After lunch, we had time for a little shopping, but we weren't really in the market for anything. We didn't see any silk, but the items carved from olive wood were lovely. They were mostly kitchen implements and tableware, and I could see David tense every time I admired something for a little too long, ready to remind me that we're supposed to be downsizing at this time of life, not acquiring more stuff to bring home to a house that (he thinks) is already full.

Then it was time to reboard our boat for an hour's tour of some of the more spectacular villas along the lake's shores.

As you can see in the left-hand photo, we once again had plenty of space, so everyone could sit by the window or get up and walk around to get the best photos. The right-hand photo is one of the first houses we saw.

The captain pulled in close to give us a good view of this spectacular cleft in the shoreline where a waterfall spills into the lake. A small bridge spans its mouth, and it's supposed to be good luck to jump from the bridge (a drop of maybe 20 feet), preferably naked.

The villa in the right-hand photo, the one with the small white boat right in front and by no means the showiest, is George Clooney's place. The captain pointed out that the boat's cover was on, and all the windows were shuttered, so he probably wasn't there.

Surprisingly, the villa ar the left here belongs to the in-laws of two members of our tour group! It's owned by their son's father-in-law. They even have a standing invitation to visit, which they've never managed to take advantage of. They won't be able to on this trip either, as none of the family is in residence just now. The boat captain knows the shoreline well and, given the family, was able to take us right to the place.

The right-hand photo shows the Villa d'Este, a hotel for the last 150 years. It was built in 1568 as a summer residence for the Cardinal of Como, who named it Villa Garovo, after the stream that flows into the late next to it. Like other historic villas on the lake, it passed through many ownerships before being opened as a hotel. You can visit its website for photos of its beautiful interior.

Our tour ended near the town of Como—everything we saw was on the western arm of the Y; we never visited the eastern arm or the "stem" north of Bellagio.

We piled back into the bus for the ride to our hotel in Stresa, on the west bank of Lake Maggiore, the Grand Hotel des Îles Borom&ecute;es, which is over-the-top baroque in decor. Apparently things in that area were named while the region was still under French domination, as the islands and the hotel named after them have kept their French names. We were assured that the Grand is where all the Arab oil tycoons stay while their villas are being made ready.

On the way to Stresa, we made the usual stop at an Autogrill, which had particularly nice-looking salads, fruit cups, and sandwiches, as well as the usual dizzying assortment of other stuff. Along the way, I saw lots of maize in the fields, presumably for polenta, since it doesn't look like fresh sweet corn, and they're letting it dry out, so it shouldn't be silage.

Here we are in the hotel's courtyard, an ornate little circular area off the road for loading and unloading. To the left of the fountain was the entrance to the underground parking garage.

As we unloaded from the bus in the courtyard, we were parked next to a black stretch limo from which a man in Arab dress emerged, though we saw no further evidence of him or his entourage during our stay.

At the right is an initial view of my room—cherubs over the headboard and glass chandelier, probably Murano.

My balcony overlooked the road, the narrow strip of lake-side park, and the lake itself. If I stepped out and looked to the left, I had a view of the Borromeo Islands that we visited the next day.

The closet was capacious and provided many drawers, but alas the drawers (the only ones in the room) were all so shallow they wouldn't hold anything much thicker than ties and handkerchiefs, which I had not brought with me. And there was no light in there, so the back of the closet was pretty dim.

The elevator lobby on each floor illustrated a different architectural style. Mine was "Rococo Romano" (as the sign between the elevators says). The elevator floors are mosaic.

Here are photos of part of the lobby (left) and the Hemingway bar (right). Lovely for a short hotel stay, but the decor would drive me berzerk if I had to live in it permanently!

Dinner in the hotel's restaurant was included. Here at the left is the bread assortment each of us got. The long, thin, lumpy pieces in the front are thickly studded with whole olives.

The amuse-bouche was this tiny mound of salmon tartare.

My first course was leek and red potato soup with bottarga curls. The dark objects floating on it were flower petals, but the amber ones were the bottarga, which is definitely not my favorite. Luckily, it didn't interfere with the soup, which was delicious.

At the right is my main course: beef tournedos stuffed with foie gras on a bed of braised spinach, medium rare as ordered.

I don't seem to have photos of David's choices. I think he was sitting on the opposite side of our table for eight, so it was impractical to get those shots.

For dessert, I chose lemon sorbet. It wasn't quite up to the wonderful lemon sorbets of the Amalfi coast last year, but it was quite delicious nonetheless.

About 9:30 pm, we were treated to a fireworks display from the other side of the lake. I asked about it the next day and was told that on weekends, the villages opposite Stresa take turns shooting off fireworks as an addition attraction for tourists.