Sunday on Lake Maggiore

Carrie Holm
Jun 25, 2017
2 min read

Sofia is my darling who I met when I first moved to Varese as she owned the Aribnb I was renting for the summer. After two years, still friends, and today she and her dad took me out on Lake Maggiore (about 30 minutes from Varese) and it really was a great day on the lake.

Sofias dad also knows about everything there is to know about the islands on the lake, and I adore when people want to share these things with me- I learn while enjoying the view!

We came to Cerro, and walked along the water to get to the boat- just such nice weather, 31 degrees and clear sky. The weather last night was insane, thunder and lightning, windy, rainy and so on- which means that it was much less humid today than the days before- so much better!

The first island we came to Isola Bella (the beautiful island, cared for from around year 1600), which is one of the Borromean Islands and has an absolutely stunning garden inside, you can read more about it HERE

We passed Isola Madre (the mothers island), which is apparently where the mother of the Borromeo family had her estate, since one does need an entire island for that...

After we anchored the boat and had a swim in what was surprisingly warm water (I would think it would still be cold), Sofias dad told me that in the first (and second) picture below you can see the part of the mountain where they took the marble to construct the Duomo di Milano. They extracted the marble and had it transported down to Milan through the rivers and channels.

If you look right above the boat on the picture you can see that the mountain is a bit patched, there it is.