Meredith and I have had the good fortune to travel a lot. In the last thirteen years, we’ve been to Europe twenty or more times, and had been several times even before that. We’ve been to well-traveled areas, like London, Paris, and Rome. We’ve been to less (American) touristed places, like Iceland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltics.  We’ve traveled by train and by car. We’ve stayed in hostels and beach resorts. We’ve seen and done a fair amount of things in Europe. We know what we’re doing.

Except when we don’t. That often corresponds to when I’m in charge.

Our hotel in Milan had a large breakfast spread, but it cost 15 euros per person (about eighteen dollars). That seemed really excessive to me for breakfast, and I figured we could do much better at a cafe or bakery. So we skipped breakfast and set off, using the Milan metro to go to the cathedral (the Duomo) in the old city center. We’d see a couple of quick sites, get some breakfast, and go to church in the Duomo, before going back to the hotel to then go on to Lake Iseo by train. A perfect touring plan.

We got to the Duomo square and had the wonderful pleasure of coming up out of the metro station to be facing the front of the church. That is always impressive to do that at a major site. Many pictures were taken, and we enjoyed the early-day sunshine. We had a little over an hour before church started, so we went into the Galleria, one of the first shopping malls in Europe (opened in 1877), and a high-end shopping area now. It’s gorgeous, with beautiful ironwork and glass and mosaics. The window displays are all immaculate, including one huge sculpture made all of chocolate. We ooohhed and ahhhed over the windows, and then walked a few blocks to the small Piazza Mercanti, which had a covered market area, some fancy facades, and an old covered well from the 1500s.

On to breakfast! I had seen a cafe on the Duomo square, and I knew we’d pay for the view, but it was worth it. Several tables outside were taken, so we sat at the far end of the line of tables, where our view of the Duomo was blocked by a double-decker tour bus. But, being a tour bus, it would move soon, so we ordered breakfast. I got a ham and cheese croissant and a medium hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was huge, and was quite good. I was very pleased to be sitting outside, in Milan, in the sun, drinking one of my favorite drinks.

And then the bill came. My hot chocolate alone was fifteen euros. The same as my buffet breakfast at the hotel would have cost. The total bill was forty-nine euros, and for all of us to eat at the hotel would have been sixty. Ooops.

The tour bus never moved.

We did get to the church service, walking in a couple of minutes late. The mass lasted about an hour. Meredith had forgotten that the service would be in Italian and not Latin, so she understood most of what went on. I didn’t, but we were worshipping in a pretty place, and the singing by the cantor was beautiful in the cathedral space. Meredith informed me that the homily was on Jesus rolling back the rock of Lazarus’ tomb and asking us what our rocks are that need to be rolled away so that we have life in Jesus again. Interesting take on that passage.

After church, we swung by McDonald’s for a much-needed bathroom break (European cities are not great at public restrooms), and then we did go back to the hotel. We gathered our luggage and made our way to the nearby Milano Centrale train station, which is huge and elegant, in a fascist sort of way (built in the 1930s). We had some small trouble with the machine to get our train tickets (it wouldn’t take our credit card, and we had to use all of our cash to pay for them), but we succeeded and got to ride a high-speed train to Brescia, and then a regional train to Sulzano on Lake Iseo, across from the island of Monte Isola. Monte Isola is a pretty island that I wanted to see and hike around, which is why we ended up here today.

We got off the train at the station, and started walking to the hotel. I had found a hotel slightly out of town, about a twenty-minute walk away. I think it’s because we’re here in off season, but it was the only hotel I could find for us when I booked it back in December. No big deal – twenty minutes with luggage isn’t great, but we can handle that.

And then we turned off the main road onto a side road that went up. And up. And then got steeper. And then turned onto a steep section. All while we pulled and pushed luggage up the hill. It seems I need to look at topographical maps now when I book places. We were all winded, and I was sweaty, when we got to the hotel, but the views were pretty great. I decided that we would eat at the hotel when we got back. We needed to enjoy the view (even in the dark, the lights off the water are pretty), and I didn’t want to add an extra climb back up that hill.

We got settled and went down the hill, back into town, back to within a hundred yards of the train station, to catch the ferry to the island. Sigh.

Susan, who has never been to Europe, had other firsts today. She had never been on a subway, and then we got her on a high-speed train, and then on a ferry, all in the same day. The ferry only took five minutes, but it was a scenic five minutes. The lake is surrounded by mountains, including the view of a snow-covered mountain to the north. Monte Isola is impressive in its own right, with an elevation of over nineteen hundred feet.

We docked in the village of Peschiera and disembarked. I had no set plan except to enjoy the sun and the scenery. We started walking along the small (car-free) road along the lakefront, but then I got distracted by a small alley that went up, so we followed that. It took us on a serpentine path up to the town church, which was built around 1500. The door was open, so we went in and had the place to ourselves. It’s not a touristically important church, but it was filled with good art and was of an impressive size. We liked it very much.

We kept following the road up, and it came to the town cemetery. We find cemeteries interesting, and this one was located in a gorgeous spot, with views of the lake and mountains. Island life seems to be good – there were numerous people who lived to be in their nineties. The cemetery was built vertically because of lack of open space, with family plots being more of family vaults built into walls. It was a peaceful spot.

The road kept going up, but I had wanted to stay along the shore, so we went back down to the shore road. We kept going west, with a small castle as the nominal destination. We stopped for gelato, of course, and ate it while looking over the water. We left the village behind, but there were frequent benches, and we used them once to rest. We stopped whenever we saw something that interested one of us, which included flowers, wild areas, changing views of the lake and mountains, and even an outdoor cat sanctuary. I suspect that a car-free island is a good place to be a cat.

We got to the next village and decided that the castle was a tad too high up to try to reach. That turned out to be a good decision, since the castle was another mile on and three hundred feet up. We turned around instead and walked back to the ferry, which only took about thirty minutes. We were tired, and it was well after 5:00, so we went back (up) to the hotel, resting a bit in our rooms before meeting for dinner at 7:00. After supper, we did go out and look at the lights on the water before retreating into the lobby to the welcome fire in the fireplace. March evenings are still chilly here.

It was a good (and mellow) itinerary for our first full day in Italy. Sometimes I do know a thing or two, but there’s always more to learn and see.