We approached Isola Bella by boat. Isola Bella means beautiful island in Italian. It is a small island on an Italian lake called Lago Maggiore. We only brought a backpack with all our stuff in for the night and the next day (as you wouldn’t want to walk up to the hotel with two large suitcases and have them say ‘how long are you staying here?’ ‘one night ‘WHAT!!!’ so yeah we just stuffed all our stuff in a backpack).
We settled into the hotel nicely. It was a rustic sort of old-fashioned type of hotel. We had a nice dinner which included sea food, and a lot of pasta!
When we got up Phoenix was already hungry so we had to rush getting ready to meet his expectations. When we went down and sat at a table we got given hundreds of plates that were piled high with delicious food such as, different types of fruit, lovely pastries and two plates of a variety of fruity jams.
We wanted to explore the amazing island so we went to this grand house (that quite obviously took up most of the island sharing the space with a few dozen food places!). Inside was magnificent the floor and ceiling was covered in detailed mosaics inspired by the Roman past. We were dying to get into the garden as we had seen it from a distance when we were traveling across on the boat and it looked wonderful. After a while of wandering around the interesting things that have been built over the last 400 years, we entered the stunning garden. We couldn’t believe our eyes… there were white peacocks! They looked absolutely indescribable. They were beautiful! Can you spot them on the photo below?
There was also a glass house with a variety of amazing exotic plants, including cactuses, palms and air plants that get their water from air. I’ve just noticed that one of the peacocks was in a funny position when we took the photo and looks rather headless! 😉
