Swallows and an Island Cruise

I'm writing this post without my glasses, because I'm already sitting in our hotel's breakfast room and I left my glasses upstairs. So if it's full of typos I apologize! I'll come back and clean it up when I can see again!

Yesterday was very busy. I took a long walk around Stresa after breakfast, both up and down the lake, to take in all the sights. That's one scene from my walk, above. Here are some more:

I was astonished to  come across this old, wrecked villa, commanding a scenic position overlooking the lake. It's surrounded by multimillion-Euro properties. How does it happen that a place like this is just left to deteriorate? Is it caught up in a family dispute, a contested will, a legal limbo?

I watched swallows swooping through the sky above the hilly neighborhood, just as they do in town, shrieking loudly among the "cliffs" of buildings. They are omnipresent here, along with sparrows and pigeons.

I walked a long time -- a couple of hours, I think -- and then stopped for a coffee before heading back to the room to find Dave. The well-rested Dave was ready for an adventure by this time, so we set out right away to take a boat ride to the Borromean Islands, a group of three islands in the middle of the lake. They're mostly owned by the aristocratic Borromeo family, related to medieval Milanese cardinal St. Charles Borromeo, whose memorial fountain I came across in Vienna just a few months ago.

There are three main islands, Isola Madre, Isola de Pescatori and Isola Bella. We didn't go to Madre, and spent most of our time wandering the narrow streets and waterfront of Pescatori, which is apparently the only permanently inhabited island of the three (according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong).

Here's a video showing the swallows flying overhead on my morning walk, followed by our boat excursion on the lake:

You even get some rare footage of me and Dave!

We watched people swimming in the lake off this sunny promontory on Pescatori. I was frankly jealous, because it was hot!

The streets are so narrow a person could almost reach out from one window to touch the building across the way, Lots of interesting angles and shadows!

Isola Bella is largely occupied by a palace and formal terraced garden, which we can actually see from our hotel balcony (see yesterday's top photo). We didn't visit them because by the time we figured out how to enter the garden we were hot and tired, so we just caught the boat back. I'm sure they're spectacular but you can't see everything, right? Instead we wandered the steep, narrow streets and saw sights like someone's collection of vintage outboard motors (above).

When we got back to Stresa Dave retreated to the air conditioning and, inspired by the swimmers on Isola de Pescatori, I put on my bathing suit and went for a dip in the lake. There's a public beach right across from our hotel. I waded in and found the bottom unpleasantly rocky -- the pebbles were smooth but still painful to walk on. I  almost gave up, but I saw that everyone else was barefoot so I decided to try a different spot along the beach, and sure enough it was much sandier. I had a good swim, which felt amazing. (And then I took a second brief dip in our hotel pool.)

We had pasta last night in the main square, listening once again to the shrieking swallows. Off today to Lake Garda!