Butt Buster Bikes

It appeared that adventure holidays may not quite suit me. The aging body continued to get a battering with the buttocks taking a turn today. We had organised an e-bike tour with Susanna to explore the area as the towns were mostly quiet/closed being the off season. 

As we arrived quite late the previous night, we wandered down the hill to buy some breakfast from the local supermarket before Susanna picked us up for our tour. The plan had to be modified somewhat because of the snow from 3-4 days ago. She drove us up to the village of Armeno we cycled up through the village of Coiromonte and onto Tre Montagnette for a bird's eye view of Lake Maggiore. On a clear day, you could see all the way to Switzerland. Cycling through snow and ice was HARD! I almost fell off the mountain...Let's just say it was a relief to get back onto bitumen!

We cycled down the way we came and continued down towards Orta San Giulio. We wandered around the main piazza as well as visiting the Sacro Monte, a collection of 20 devotional chapels atop a hill with spectacular views of Lake Orta. Thankfully from here, Susanna drove us back to Stresa. The butt could take no more. She was kind enough to take us to a supermarket for us to buy provisions as our rental was in the "Beverly Hills" of Stresa but required mountain goat skills to get to anywhere. If you are interested in active endeavours in the area or anywhere in Italy really, contact Susanna. She was warm, helpful and great with the children. Her English was good enough with some lost in translation along the way but she made up for it with high enthusiasm!

Beautiful Lake Maggiore on our walk towards the centre of Stresa

Even vending machine coffee in Italy was better than coffee in Iceland. Sorry Iceland!

Anything nutella was a hit! Even supermarket ones

Having breakfast on a bench like hobos

Susanna and her great van set up

Making sure we remember how to ride a bike...

We needed many stops even on e-bikes 😂

Beautiful views everywhere

Our destination

Not really sure what the background was of anymore!

Lake Maggiore

Time to get going

Back through Coiromonte

And onto Orta San Giulio

A virtually empty Piazza

Island of San Giulio

The ceiling of Chapel 1 at Sacro Monte

Chapel 6?! I had lost count by then

Statues inside

The children chose hot chocolate (the nice thick Italian style) over visiting the island of San Giulio

More nutella based pastries! Happy kids

Goodbye Iceland Hello Italy

Snow everywhere

 

Today's brief post will mainly convey our gratitude that we, along with all of our bags, made it to out of Reykjavik and into Italy. The heavy snowstorm that closed the roads and cancelled our snorkelling tour also cancelled many flights. We arrived at Keflavik airport to a sea of stranded passengers who obviously had to sleep at the airport. 

Flights today didn't seem to be affected by the snow. The check in system was mostly automated with many airlines all sharing the same check in kiosks as well as bag drop counters. Security was a short 5 minutes. There was no lounge at Keflavik airport and none of the cafes were open, meaning there was no good hot coffee. Gasp! We waited and waited for our SAS flight to take us to Copenhagen. It kept getting delayed by 15 minute intervals as we watched our 3 hour buffer get dwindled away. The plane finally arrived and we were off. Upon landing at Copenhagen we had 45 minutes to make it onto our next flight to Milan Malpensa. We had never walked so fast and an airport had never felt so big. Somehow, our bags made it too. It was a relief to see it falling onto the luggage carousel upon arrival at Milan. From there it was smooth sailing, our private transfer was waiting for us and drove us to Stresa uneventfully. The house was warm, spacious and had very comfortable beds!

Lots of space

Modern and clean bathrooms

Really comfortable mattresses!

Milan Mini Detour

Lake Maggiore

And just like that it was time to say goodbye to Greece. We didn't want to risk missing our long haul flight home from Milan, and so flying the trusty Ryanair we left Greece one day earlier. We needn't have worried, other than witnessing about 20 people having to pay for either not checking in before hand or not keeping to luggage requirements, the flight was uneventful and even landed 35 minutes early. It only took 20 minutes to get out of Milan Malpensa airport and we hopped on to the free shuttle to the Hilton Garden Inn. 

After dumping our bags, we decided to adventure our way to Arona at Lake Maggiore. We wanted a taste of the area whilst it was still warm! The train station looked deserted but we were helped by a very friendly train master. Between our collective broken English and Italian, we got the information we needed. He even wrote down all the times of the trains that departed from Arona to get us back. In 20 minutes we were at Arona. We didn't do much other than stroll, eat gelato and munch on pizza by the lake, but it was a nice stop before flying home

From this...

...to budget airline Ryanair

As you do in Italy, you come across random old looking things

Sorry Greece, even the random coffee in Italy is better than from a fancy cafe in Greece

The very quiet local train station

Waiting for our train

Walking lakeside at Arona

Italian Piazza!

Arona

Dinner time

He wanted hot chocolate

The blog will end here as tomorrow is purely a travel day. A few random thoughts...this has been our shortest trip to Europe. It almost felt abrupt to have to go home! It was also an experience travelling as a party of 3, rather than the minimum 5 or more commonly 7 or 9. Whilst we enjoyed the convenience and ease of travel, we definitely missed the comradery of our travel mates, and being able to share moments with the whole family. Jonah definitely missed his siblings. Fortunately for us, our next family trip is not too far away staving off post holiday blues. Time to go home now to fund these trips!