Lake Orta

Lago D'Orta is presumably not as well known as Como or Maggiore, even to Italians, and that appears to be a good thing. It's way less touristy and busy, getting there was an easy 90 minute tractor ride from Torino mainly on the autostradas and from the first glimpses of the Isola as you approach the lake it is stunning.

Our arrival was equally stunning to some locals as google decided to send us down a walled laneway barely wider than the tractor, which it quickly became apparent we shouldn't really be driving down but now had little choice. Feeling like a bad set up on Top Gear we emerged from the laneway at the top of.. stairs. Which we then confidently drove down, to a variety of assertive stares, through the main piazza and on to a (sort of) real road. Thus we introduced ourselves to pretty Orta San Guilio by the vehicular equivalent of shagging our debutante on the front porch in front of her father.

Don't drive down here

Recovering from this unconventional entrance we found our residence Casa Sul Lago sitting right on the lake front with beautiful views across the lake and to the Isola San Guilio in the middle. I am always amazed at the interesting provisioning decisions taken by the owners of holiday rental properties. In an improvement over some previous residences, this property came with all of 2 wine glasses instead of one. The same as the number of fridges it had and twice the number of arms on the corkscrew. For a 3 bedroom place that slept six. Seriously?

Casa Sul Lago

Ok, so we got there, but what did we do for 4 days? Buggered if I can remember, if I'm honest. This will surprise no-one, since on a Monday morning I generally struggle to remember what transpired on the weekend if asked, but in this case I can in part honestly claim that we actually didn't do much.

Doing little in the local piazza a short stroll from home

Some of our equally chilled neighbours, taken from the balcony

Orta was intended to be chill out and some working time for me, and as we generally do in small Italian towns we tended to take things easy, wander out for leisurely coffees and meals and drink in the sights and sounds of the place. I did a little work, but less than I had intended as it turned out that the mobile phone network there was constructed of tin cans and particularly dodgy string and 3G data was a ludicrous fantasy. This meant getting on line usefully involved a complicated acrobatic maneuver in the far corner of one particular bedroom to pick up the in-house public-area wifi. We didn't do that much.

We took the obligatory boat ride out to the Isola, walked around its single loop of  street, passed on the universally panned restaurant that's there and took a boat ride back. Much of the day still remained. Nonetheless Gerri and Tara did it again later in the week. Reports were it was similar.

Stupidly beautiful but a dodgy restaurant

Much of the rest of the time was taken with the usual eating and drinking. And eating. There may well have been more drinking, For a small town Orta San Guilio has some good restaurants. At the top end there is the 2 Michelin starred Villa Crespi, which we decided would not be enjoyable with Tara in tow. However the local wood fired pizza place was great (and did takeaway) as were a couple of mid range places in town, including one with a spectacular rooftop terrace at which we had lunch.

The spectacular part of the view was just out of frame right

The weather was warm to hot and humid most of the time, with the occasional brief thunderstorm. There was also a torrential downpour just before the 16.5km Lago D'Orta Night Run that was on the night before we left, which I expect dampened the spirits of the runners a little (I wasn't one of them). In general though the whole place was just a lovely relaxing postcard of a spot that you could happily sit for hours and just look at.

From the balcony post-storm

All too quickly our time there was up, and we realised with real sadness that this was the last of Italy for this trip. Had that actually been that case it would have been a fitting farewell, but of course we'd forgotten about the fact that our last hours in Italy would actually be spent at Milan airport. Terminal 1 at Milan isn't at all bad, but unfortunately EasyJet flies to Spain out of Terminal 2, which is all that bad. But surprisingly our flight was on time, and despite a boarding process lifted from a concentration camp management handbook, we were soon on our way to Barcelona.