My mobile phone rang on Tue. during my Italian lesson. Israel was on the line, sounding pretty serious. "I was thinking..." he said."Would it be better if I came on your birthday this weekend or on Valentine's Day?". A huge smile spread on my face, "It would be lovely if you come anytime you want, can we talk about this in an hour after my Italian lesson?...". "Sure" he said, "no problem". Half an hour later, Alon, his neighbor, calls. "I'm in the middle of my Italian lesson" I say, "Can this wait for half an hour?!", "NO", he says, "this is more important... are you free this weekend?" I said, "sure, nothing special going on...". He says: "We're thinking of buying Israel an air ticket to come and visit you for your birthday, would that be OK?!" I figure this has been cooking for a bit in the Golan, "sure it would, but you better move fast, because Israel just called to discuss this and I told him I was in the middle of my Italian lesson...". Alon answered "Got it, we'll let you know when he's coming" and that was it. Thursday evening I was waiting in the arrivals hall of Malpensa to greet my birthday present...Luckily, the Gods or whoever's in charge of the weather dealt us a good hand. Clear skies for the first time in days. "Where do you want to go?" I asked Israel. "It's your birthday, you decide" he said. "Some mountains maybe?! Covered with snow...?" I asked. A big smile spread on his face, "Yes, when do we go?" he asked. "Wait, I've got to check things out on the internet....". "No you don't", he said, "let's just go". I managed to write some names of places I thought might be nice on a piece of paper, we packed a few things, I took the GPS and off we went. I forgot to take the atlas so we were totally dependent on the GPS (not terribly smart, but there you have it) and my memory of some names of places.
We set out in the direction of Lago Maggiore. I was told that Eremo di Santa Caterina del Sasso, a hermitage on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore was a nice place to visit. We arrived there exactly at lunchtime and the place was closed and deserted. We went down to the hermitage (lots of steps) but there wasn't anything going on there. You can see me over there looking out at the lake. In summer it's probably a nice place to visit, coming in with a boat from the lake (the hermitage hugs the cliff of the mountain). "What now?!" we asked ourselves? lunch and then to the mountains.
It turns out that to get to the mountains from where we were, one needs to take a ferry across the lake to Intra (see on the left). Strangely enough, the GPS directs you to do exactly that. I was a bit wary of this. Why? not sure really. Never took a car on a ferry before. The trip was short, calm and uneventful. Israel took the opportunity to take some pictures of me on the ferry. In the pictures you can see that I've been primed from a young age to have my picture taken. I keep making faces at the camera.... At one point Israel said, "smile already and stop making faces!" I did as ordered:
We got to the other side and drove along the highway. Israel asked "where are we going?" I said, "Macugnaga, my colleague recommended going there". He said, "Is that in the mountains?" I said "yes, a village at the end of the road before Monte Rosa, the highest mountain massif in Italy after the Mt. Blanc". He said, "Good!". At some point we turned off the highway and started driving through small villages and climbing towards the mountains. "I like this!" said Israel. The temp. dropped, we were loosing centigrades rapidly.... I was driving. The road was getting narrower, the snow on either side -higher and I was getting nervous. Israel, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. Israel is like this - the higher the mountains, the narrower the roads - the happier he is....
The views were magnificant. No one on the road, practically. A few cars coming down the mountain. We saw our first glimpse of Monte Rosa in the distance:
Finally, we got to a small village in Macugnaga called Staffa. Israel urged me to go on to Pecetto, the next village, but the road was getting icy and I was worried about driving further on the ice. We parked in the center of the village. The temp. was by this time down to -9. What does one do in a tiny village when the temp. is -9 and the tourist information is closed for the day? Well, you start with a hot chocolate at Flizzi's (I swear that's the name of the place, I've got evidence which you'll see later down the post)... This is Israel over there:
Then you take a short tour of the place (short, because it's freezing cold and there's not that far to go, everything's buried in about 80-100 cm of snow....). On the left, that's a car....:
It's cold but the sunset is glorious:
We took a room at the Flora Hotel which you can see in the picture on the left. Nice hotel and nice owners. We also had dinner there (we could have gone out to find some other place to eat but who wants to go out at -9 or less?!). The food was good (fixed menu made by the signora of the house) but expensive compared with the price of the room and the fact that there were no choices on the menu. Nice ambiance in the dining room with a wood burning fire.
Sunday morning I got Israel and myself out of bed at 7:30 to move the car which was parked in an area you need to vacate by 8:00. We rushed down only to find that everything was dark in the lobby and the hotel's entrance door was still locked... The signora came out a bit bleary eyed and asked what we were up to. I told her we needed to move the car. She looked at me like I'm crazy and said that she thought they start giving tickets only at 9:00.... She opened the door for us and we went out. Sure enough, there was no one in sight except for one woman with a friendly dog. Dead silence (this was Sun. morning after all). Looking around, I doubted anyone was coming to write tickets that morning... But I moved the car anyway and noticed in the process that the temp. had dropped to -14 during the night. Brrrrr.....
Did we go back to the room?! No, we didn't. I told Israel let's go for a walk... He, being a good sport, agreed and off we went. In any case, the signora told us that the brioche were not ready yet... In the picture on the left, by the way, you can see, if you click on it, the name of the place where we'd had the hot chocolate... On the right you can see me on our walk. What does -14 feel like?! Very cold...
We also went by this small, very old church, full of graves of former residents buried in deep snow:
After breakfast we left Macugnaga not before Israel took the beautiful picture at the top of the post (as he did all the other pictures here...) of the Monte Rosa massif. We didn't go up to the top because there were strong winds that day and the signor at the hotel said he didn't think it would be worthwhile to go up when it's so cold. By the way, the Monte Rosa is on the border with Switzerland. On the other side you find the Matterhorn and the village of Zermat.
"Where to now?!" Israel asked. I said I wanted to show him Lago D'Orta. It's a small lake, west of Lago Maggiore. Small but beautiful. I'd been there with other friends last summer. In the middle of the lake there's a tiny island - San Guilio.
We stopped for a few minutes at the Sacre Monte di Orta which is a Roman Catholic devotional complex on top of a hill. The place is made up of 20 chapels dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi and was built during the 16th and 17th century. The chapels represent episodes in the life of St. Francis and Jesus. The place is a UNESCO world heritage site and was used by Christians who couldn't go to the Holyland. This is a picture taken in the chapel representing the canonization of St. Francis:
Since the order of the day was mountains I decided to take Israel to Mottarone, a mountain near Stressa, which I've described in previous posts - from which one can see 7 lakes in the area. I'd only been up there in the autumn or early summer and for some reason I didn't realize that it's a big ski resort with lots of people skiing and doing cross country. Driving up the mountain we got some magnificant views:
Unfortunately, it was difficult to get to the top top of the mountain from where you can see all the lakes. There was too much snow and really the only way up was on your skis. Israel looked longingly at the ski slopes and told me he's coming back to ski this season....
We had the time of our lives - even without skiing, as you can see in the pictures below (I'm squinting because the sun was in my eyes...):
I had a wonderful birthday (thanks again to Alon and Neta for the present).... I'll leave you with another picture of winter from the road up to Mottarone:
