Cremona, Stressa, and the Long Flight Home

On Saturday morning I awoke early and went for a quiet stroll along the streets of Venice Mestra. For some reason or other I couldn't sleep so I decided to get up around 5:30 AM, figuring I could sleep on the bus (5-6 hours of bus riding from Venice to Cremona to Stressa). It was a lovely, cool, quiet morning, and the streets were empty except for a few people out for a morning walk or jog.

After breakfast at the hotel we boarded the bus and made our way to Cremona, home to Stradivarius and Amati, famous for the tradition of high quality, hand-made violins dating back to the 16th century. While in Cremona we strolled around an open-air market - I bought peaches from a local vendor (yum) - then visited the city hall to hear a short performance on a 17th century Strad and toured the collection of string instruments. Following this we had time for lunch and then it was back on the bus.


From here we drove to Stresa, a tourist resort town on the shores of Lake Maggiore, nestled at the base the Alps in the north of Italy. This town is famous for its hotels, one of which - the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees - used to host Ernest Hemingway during his visits. He liked the hotel so much he actually set part of Farewell to Arms there. In addition to its opulence, Stresa is also the sight of the famous 1937 "Stresa Conference" where British and French heads of state met with Mussolini in an attempt to forge an alliance against Germany to prevent the escalation of hostilities leading into WWII. This conference took place at the Borromeo Palace on Isolde Bella, an island just offshore(a ten minute boat ride) from the town.

We spent a lovely evening in the town. I wandered through the shops, along the lakefront, and spent a bit of time watching the town from the window of my hotel room five stories above the street level. Dinner was delicious - a great way to celebrate the success of our trip.

The next morning I woke up early and went for a stroll along the lake front in the early morning sunlight:


While on my walk I passed a group of Italian boys - late teens/early twenties - dressed in khaki pants and button down shirts with sweaters draped jauntily around their shoulders. They were joking around, laughing, giggling, hanging on each other, sitting on a park bench near the lake. They had clearly been up all night long. They had a look of drowsy contentment on their faces that one only can find on the faces of those who are in the company of good friends creating lasting memories. It made me think of staying up all night in London with my friends fifteen years ago.

My stroll concluded at the hotel where I wolfed down breakfast and then headed to a boat that would take us out Isole Bella and the Borromeo Palace. Here we had free time to stroll about the grounds for a couple of hours:

After enjoying a nice quiet morning on the island, we boarded our bus and took off for the Milan airport. From here it was a mere eleven hours of airports, planes, lines. We arrived in Chicago on time and picked up our baggage within minutes of passing through customs (quite a contrast to Rome). Once I made it through I said goodbye to the kids and chaperones, boarded the blue line train for downtown, then got on a Megabus to Champaign (I don't recommend this after flying internationally). I arrived at 1 AM Monday morning in Champaign where Kaia picked me up in the middle of a tempest and we made our way home.