Europe trip part 26

Wednesday 25 September

 Today we went back into Stresa to take the boat around Isola Madre to Isola Bella which is a tiny island just offshore on Lake Maggiore. The boat trip was very expensive considering it only vtook 10 mins each way – it coast almost the same as the whole trip to Locarno and back! We walked around the Palace which is decorated in the Baroque style – very luxurious. It is a bit like the Vatican with the frescos, paintings and tapestries and took 400 years to complete! At one time, Napolean (the ruler of France) stayed here.

 We then walked around the garden which was lovely with white peacocks and an amazing wall feature that had all sorts of mythical creatures attached to it. Granny had a swollen foot from mosquito bites and she needed to rest so we headed home and had dinner.

 Thursday 26 September

 Today we left the lake and headed to Thorens-Glieres in France which is near Geneva, so that granny and grandpa could fly home from there on Saturday.

 We took the scenic route up over the Swiss Alps. We got to over 2000m and we were driving through the clouds for a short while at the top. We then came down the other side of the mountains into Switzerland and drove along the Rhone river valley. The valley was packed with grape vines – no wonder they make lots of wine here. We then went around the top of Lake Geneva and had nice views of the cities of Montreux (which Dad thinks has a famous jazz music festival) and Lausanne.

 This trip took us nearly 6.5 hrs in the end due to the GPS telling us to take the ferry in the middle of the alps (think she was having a moment!!) and then going around in circles due to road works near Geneva – mum was a bit stressed by then. We ended up driving through Geneva so we saw the Jet d’eau on the lake again. We finally checked into our lovely farmhouse late that afternoon – it had some nice views of the French Alps.