Monte Boletto

It's almost one month since I was in Italy, and high time I finished posting about my trip, but I think subconsciously, I've been putting off writing this particular post.

On the Monday morning, as my friends set off for work, I took the train up to Como to do a walk that I had been wanting to do for a long time. You take the funiular to Brunate and follow the signs to the “faro”, the lighthouse that stands a little higher up on the hillside. From the lighthouse, you follow the red and white signs, which lead you further up the hill, through villages and forest and up on to the mountain ridge. You can follow the "Dorsale" path right the way to Bellaggio, but I stopped at the top of Monte Boletto.

I think I've been scared of posting about this hike because words can't do it justice. Even the photos don't do it justice. When I arrived at th top of the mountain, less than two hours' walk from Como, and saw the dark lake at my feet and the snowy mountains stretching out into the distance above it, their summits reaching ever higher, I felt that I might be in the most beautiful place in the world, and the joy that I felt was bittersweet, because when I left Italy last summer, I left all that world and all its adventures so far behind.

Brunch

After our crazy night out in the hotspots of Milan, my friends and I decided to have a quiet day on Sunday, the highlight of which was trying out the totally not Italian tradition of brunch. Brunch in Milan, from what I could tell, is a very expensive way of buying a high quality version of what in the UK we call pub food. And yes, they call it “brunch.” After failing to get a table at the Californian bakery, we ended up at Exploit, which is near the columns and not at all far from the places we had visited the night before. I made the mistake, when ordering the “hamburger exploit” of assuming that the name of the place had been borrowed from English and not French. Luckily, the snooty waiter quickly corrected me and my pronunciation. Had I been feeling a bit more on the ball, I would have insisted on placing my entire order in French, but unfortunately my brightest ideas only come to me long after the opportunity to use them has passed, so at the time I just smiled sweetly and pretended to be interested.

Luckily the food, when it came, was actually very nice.

Nightlife in Milan

After our exhausting day strolling around Pavia, taking photos and relaxing in cafés in its quiet piazzas, we headed out in Milan for well-earned aperitivo. J had reserved a table at Cheese on Via Lupetta, opposite the church of Sant'Alessandro...or so she thought, until we turned out and they had no idea who she was. Luckily it turned out that the table was actually booked at Yguana, the bar next door which has the same phone number. It also provides the same food, which was the best of Italian aperitivo – lots of salad and lots of pasta to make you feel full without having eaten a huge amount – and serves very nice cocktails. It was absolutely packed and they kept trying to convince us to give away seats at our table for ten, but eventually everyone arrived and we were so squashed in that there was no way anybody was moving anywhere. After that we moved on to La Toscana, a relaxed bar on the Corsa di Porta Ticinese, which has nice squishy seats and had a bit more room to breathe. At 2 am, we still weren't quite ready to go home, so we spent an hour or so in Cuore, a bar around the corner(ish) which had very bright lights, bad music and a tiny and overstuffed dancefloor but had the advantage of being open late and having some extremely good-humoured bar staff. The night ended with a long search for a taxi. We walked up to the Duomo, where there were none, and ended up calling one of the companies after about half an hour. Our friends who walked down to the Navigli, where it's usually easier to find a taxi, ended up breaking up a fight on the way though, so we probably did choose the right direction!

Pavia

After going out for an enormous pizza and my first limoncello of the year on Friday night, I stayed with my friends J and L in Milan and we got up early enough on Saturday morning to go to Pavia. Pavia turned out to be another one of the places that I couldn't believe I hadn't discovered in a whole year of living in Italy. For anyone in Milan who feels as if they are missing out on the experience of living in a proper little Italian town, Pavia, only half an hour away on the train, is the perfect escape. It had a busy market, but the rest of the town was quiet, even on a Saturday afternoon. It does have a university though, and there were hints of some lively student life going on. It also has lots of beautiful churches, some of which were very different from any I had seen in Italy before, and is famous for its towers, which stretch up tall and straight to look out over the plains that surround the town.

The church of San Michele Maggiore. It was built of sandstone and a lot of the detail of the carving has been eroded, but it still looks amazing.

Sunken church. Unfortunately it was closed, so we couldn't go inside.

Santa Maria del Carmine. Lots of the old buildings in Pavia are built from these red bricks, often arranged so that they stick out in funny ways from the facades of the buildings.

The Torre Civico. It collapsed in 1989 and, tragically, several people were killed.

Towers

Towers and the university gate. I would have happily studied here!

Canzo in the Snow

Much as I enjoyed my first day in Milan, one day was enough. I had found all the maps I needed to head to the mountains and I was feeling inspired, so I caught the train to Canzo, the friendliest place in Italy, and set off for a hike.

Despite the smog and the rain in Milan, I was still optimistically hoping for stunning views of snow-capped mountains. Unfortunately, it was raining in Canzo too and as I walked up through the village, I stopped to add waterproof layers as often as I tried to take pictures of the rapidly disappearing mountains.

I started off on the path that Mum and I took last summer, following the signs for the 3 Alpi. After the first alp, however, I left that path and headed steeply up hill on the walker's path to the Corni di Canzo. (There are two paths, but one of them involves a via ferrata, and it wasn't the day for experimenting with that.) As well as being over optimistic about the weather, I was hoping to do the 5 hour walk in 4 hours in order to catch the train back to Milan in time for aperitivo with my former colleagues, so I pushed myself hard to get up the mountain in the snow in record time. As a result, I was slightly breathless and this, combined with being surrounded by bare black trees, fog and a thick blanket of snow, contributed to a very other-worldly impression. I did want to arrive “somewhere” before going back down the mountain, however, so I struggled onwards and upwards, stopping every so often to try to figure out how far I had gone and whether I was going to make it or not, which was tricky given the snow underfoot and the total lack of visibility.

I didn't make it right to the Corni themselves, but I reached the rifugio, which made a satisfactory end point to the climb, and let myself rest for an inadequate two and a half minutes before turning round and heading back down the path.



The whole effort became worth it, though, because just at that moment, the mist and clouds began to lift and suddenly gorgeous views of the Lago di Lecco and the Triangolo Lariano began to appear through the trees. In the distance, I could even see the snow-capped mountains.


I caught the train back with minutes to spare after jogging gently down a large section of the track. and arrived at the bar in plenty of time. I peered through the window, but couldn't see anybody I knew inside. Three of my friends were already there, however, and my loud friend Rachel must have said something loudly because just as I was turning to cross the road and check at the other bar, the Chinese bar girl came running out, calling my nickname after me in her very Chinese Italian. And once again, I felt back at home in Milan!

Italia mon amour

Just over a week ago, I got on a train in the Gare de Lyon. We sped across France, the Alps and the plains of northern Italy, and seven hours and fifteen minutes later, I stepped off the train at Milano Centrale and back into my old life.

And for one week, I lived that life again (in fact, it was better than my old life, because I was on holiday and didn't have to go to work) and I remembered how much I loved it. Then, seven days later, I got back on the train, and seven hours later, was back in my French life again.

The trip was amazing. Sad, in some ways, because it reminded me of things that I had left behind, but satisfying too, because it showed me that many of these things are there, no further than a train journey away.

I spent the first day walking around Milan, reminding myself of all the familiar places and discovering the coffee shop in the Mondadori bookshop on the Piazza del Duomo, which has delicious hot chocolate, comfortable chairs and a great view of the square and the cathedral. Then I walked down to the Navigli, caught the metro back to the castle and the Parco Sempione, wandered around some of my favourite shops, and went back for more coffee in Mondadori. Here are some of the more picturesque things that I saw: