Day 2: Laggo Iseo e Monte Isola

As promised, here is a picture of the lovely Fiat Panda that Christine drives:

 

It’s totally awesome and might be my new favorite car. It certainly has a lot of character, particularly the screechy brakes!

As you can read by the title, today we went to Laggo Iseo and then to Monte Isola, which is an island in the middle of the lake. I woke up this morning at around 9:15 after getting some much needed sleep. As we were leaving for breakfast we were stopped by a group of teenagers trying to find their way back to Brescia, supposedly by walking (it’s a really long walk). Christine tried to give them directions and wondered how the heck they were going to get there and where they came from; she also said we’d probably see them at the train station later. After they left, we were off to a nice pastry shop for breakfast where I had a cream-filled donut type thing. The cream was really good and not like anything I’d ever had cream-filling wise. We finished breakfast and headed to the train station where lo and behold our friends from before were sitting waiting for the train. They recognized us and demanded pictures, so here is us with random lost boys:

We took the train into Brescia and attempted to get a travel pass for me so I could explore Lombardy without having to get a ticket every ten seconds for the trains and busses. We tried yesterday but I didn’t have everything with me, although it seems that I am not destined to have one of these because again, I was missing information. Apparently not having information also makes the agents very angry with you. I’ll try again tomorrow: third times the charm, right? After all the pass craziness, we were off to Iseo.

Coming off the train, we walked down the sidewalk to see a beautiful view of the lake.

All of the houses are so colorful with terra cotta roofs. It makes everything so much prettier. We ate lunch at a little bar restaurant where I had a piadina. Piadinas are like quesadillas except they’re filled with things like mozzarella cheese (lots and lots of mozzarella cheese) and prosciutto crudo. Super yummy.

Although, I have to say the most interesting part of that particular restaurant was the bathroom. I’ve never seen a toilet quite like it and will certainly never use one. It’s the fanciest hole in the ground I’ve ever seen though. 

Anyway, after lunch and investigating the crazy toilet, we got on the boat to go to Monte Isola. The sun was shining and the ride was great. We sat on the top of the boat to bask in the sunshine. 

As we got closer and closer to the island, the storm clouds rolled in. We got off the boat and started to hike up the mountain as it began to rain. We stormed a castle…that was on private property, so we didn’t actually see the inside, but the outside was quite nice. We both decided it was necessary to someday own a castle.

We walked around the rest of the island and headed back to the boat to return to Iseo. It was still raining, so to try to stay dry we stopped for some gelato. I got a gelato with hot chocolate that was incredibly delicious. Christine got hers with coffee. It was so good, I was actually kind of sad when it was all gone.

 

The rain let up a bit and we walked back to the train station to Brescia, then back to Manerbio. We changed into some drier clothes and went to dinner at Saggitario. I always said I was going to spend my trip eating good food and I haven’t been disappointed. Spaghetti carbonara for dinner, with nice big chunks of bacon mixed in. Tune in tomorrow to read about our grocery store adventure and my trip to Cremano to see the museum of Stradivarius violins!