When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Limoncello: San Giulio and Lago d'Orta

The island of San Giulio lit up at night.

I was looking forward to the train ride from Naples to Milan. We were going up to Northern Italy to a wedding in the lake region in a little town called San Giulio along Lake Orta. The lake region falls in the foothills of the Italian Alps. Because of mist and clouds we didn't see a snowy peak until this afternoon and we leave tomorrow, but it took my breath away when we did. I imagined on the train trip to these snowy peaks that I'd be looking out of the window, watching the Italian country side roll by, and day dreaming. I love train travel. It didn't exactly work out that way but it was still enjoyable. There were lost pen caps to find and crayons that kept falling under the table. Samantha is in that cute but sometimes frustrating stage where she asks me how to spell every word she is writing. Our conversations go like this, "Mom, how do you spell path?" I say VERY slowly "P A T H ". A few seconds later I hear, "OK, I got the P. Now, what comes next?" Sigh. We also had strange seating assignments. We had two seats facing each other on one side of the aisle and two seats on the other side with no one in the seats across from them. The girls were sitting in those and we were just about to move across from them, when an older couple made their way down the aisle and scooted into those empty seats. They looked to be in their eighties and the woman had these piercing bright blue eyes. Steve leaned over and said "Well this should keep them in line.". More than once we had asked the girls to keep it down. Now they were perfectly quiet with wide eyed stares at their new traveling companions. They were looking at them the way kids look at someone before they reach that age where they realize that holding your gaze that long is impolite. We tried asking the couple if they would like to switch seats. It took a bit to communicate that but we did and we were starting to move when in a strange twist the man suggested "boys on one side and girls on the other". This left Steve to ride with him on one side and me, the girls and his wife on the other. We couldn't really talk with each other but she seemed like a very nice woman. We did a lot of nodding and smiling. She gave little candies to the girls. There was only one problem. Lately, when Samantha smells something that doesn't agree with her she says "It smells like cheese.". There was something in her bag that "smelled like cheese". I was a little relieved when Steve suggested going to the dining car for lunch. We later found out that eating in the Euro train dining car is kind of like eating the food out of the mini bar in your hotel, a very expensive option.

When we arrived in San Giulio, I felt like we had traveled not only to a different country but to a different season. The weather was about 15 degrees cooler. It was cool, crisp, the leaves were starting to change and it felt like we had landed into the fall I had been missing on the east coast. I read an article where San Giolio was described as "the gem of the Italian lake towns". There is much to love here. I love walking down the cobblestone streets and looking up at the windows with their wooden shutters and geraniums pouring down from window boxes. Many of the homes have these gigantic wooden front doors that look like something out of medieval times. There are the lanterns, lit by electricity these days but looking the same as the old version that used oil to light them. I look down an inviting alley way and it makes me want to explore every nook of this little town. There is an island in the middle of the lake where a basilica from the 12th century stands and a monastery that was built in 1800s. We took the boat across in the pouring rain today and explored a bit.

Steve's friend's wedding, our reason for this trip, was an elegant and heartfelt event. It was held at the "Villa Crespi", an Italian Villa whose design was inspired by "a wealthy man's travels in the Middle East". The toast that the bride's father made brought tears to my eyes. At one point the girls were playing with a new friend on the green hillside of the Villa, in their wedding finery, and someone commented that it looked like a scene out of an 18th century painting. All that was missing were the parasols.

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We took the train south this morning with all of us seated together. There were games of tic tac toe, the Disney Princess version of "Go Fish", and even some quiet moments spent watching the grape vines pass by the window on this sunny day.