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Islota Bella, Lago Maggiore, Italy

After two years of budget rate hotels my family finally got to experience a night under the stars over the longPentecost weekend.

It was with much relish that I recently dusted off our as yet untested 4 person tent aired out our musty sleeping bags lying dormant and still smelling of desert sand and sagebrush, for a weekend foray into Lago Maggiore, Italy.

For more than ten years, weekend entertainment consisted of heading to the mountains on the weekends for some high altitude air and stargazing. Then suddenly, with a lifestyle shift to urban environs this great meditation was interrupted, replaced by weekends spent catching up on food shopping or even less gratifying errands leaving me still more frazzled on Sunday evenings.

To me, camping is shorthand for getting lost, exploring, losing track of time, and the smell and feel of pine pitch and wood smoke in my hair and on my hands. Few diversions can compare to the state of empty mindedness and loseness of body and limb achieved after hiking through stands of somber trees.

Our trip to the Lago Maggiore Region of Italy was a mixture of tourist voyeurism, taking in the landmarks and curio shops in the lakeside towns, and backroads wandering.

The drive from Brig, Switzerland to Domodossola, Italy via the Simplon Pass tops out at 2008 meters, and is a  great road tour, providing glimpses of Swiss roadbuilding expertise, glacial terrain and mountain river canyons.

Simplon Pass, Switzerland

The long coast downhill to the Lake country is picturesque if not spectacular, delineated by a series of small and mid sized towns unfolding down the Osolla Valley. The main valley is ribbed with several side canyons, and these towns with their forgotten hotels and single lane throughfares are the real prize; we made a note to return with more time for exploring.

We arrived in Baveno, on the Lago Maggiore shore, in the early evening and were greeted by signs for three separate camping areas.  I had been warned beforehand by an Italian colleague not to expect too much from the ubiquitous car camping areas. We decided on the Parisi camping area due to its lakeside location (we discovered luckily they were happy to host our two dogs as well for an additional 50 centimes per paw). The camp was quiet enough and offered clean bathrooms and hot showers as well. I unrolled the new tent, slipped the shock cord tent poles into their respective sleeves and popped the dome open like an oversized party balloon suddenly resigned to inflating.

As the sun dipped over Lake Maggiore, we roasted Valaisienne sausage and bell peppers on an open grill and listened to the sound of water taxis ferrying tourists and locals to the storybook islands 200 meters from shore. Not even the rain shower in the middle of the night and the smell of two wet dogs seeking refuge inside the tent could spoil this; hardly roughing it, but I could smell the charcoal smoke in my hair and on my hands.

View of Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore

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