Wheels Around Europe . . . . . . . : Bellagio Lake Como to Orta San Guilio Lake Orta

Monday 1st July

Our camper stop at Piazza Ghisallo Magreglio in the mountains turned out to be a great choice.

Once the tourist traffic and bikers had left it was very peaceful and we slept well after the days exertions.

We'd enjoyed our time in Bellagio, but it was time to move on.

My research for our next destination brought up Orta San Guilio which is a small town on Lake Orta in our general direction of travel.

It sounded like an interesting and very scenic place, so the sat nav was duly set.

It was only about an hour and a half as we mixed with morning traffic heading into Milan.

Orta San Giulio sits on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the clear waters of the lake.

There are two camper stops provided by the town, one of which is opposite the stop for the tourist train which carries people down the hill onto the town, so that's the one we selected.

If we thought Bellagio had a lot of picturesque cobbled streets and alleyways then Orta San Giulio runs it a very close second.

The main difference is that Orta San Giulio feels a more authentic Italian town without the global recognition as a tourist destination that Bellagio enjoys.

And it is all the better for it.

Some of the buildings are amazing and have clearly been very grand residences and palaces with frescos and stucco masonary walls with ancient stones, decorative wrought iron railings, balconies and and bannisters.

Of course there is plenty for the tourists, bags of multi coloured pasta (who buys that stuff) and bags of dried porcini mushrooms for 23 euros !!!

But the tourist stuff is not at the expense of the appeal of the beautiful surroundings.

The centre of the town is Piazza Motta "the square lounge" overlooking lake Orta and Isola Di San Giulio, the small island that is a few hundred meters out into the lake.

All picture perfect stuff, so I'll let the photographs do the talking.

Suffice to say I'm very pleased we found this place and we thoroughly enjoyed our time in the town.

Unfortunately it was cut short by a thunderstorm, so we headed back to Ed with the help of the tourist train chugging us up the hill through the downpour.

The rest of the afternoon was spent drying Louis, drying us and drying Ed out, yes we went out leaving the roof vents open so in came the rain !

It's surprising how quickly things dry out here though, thankfully

I think the internet connection is going to be too slow to load the photos so I`ll do it when I can