Lake Maggiore and Grinate

Despite a 6:25P MXP-FRA flight later that day, we decided to check out and try to put the memories of this hotel behind us ASAP, both of us wishing that we had planned one less day on this trip. We headed south and explored the Lago Maggiore coastline. While the drive was pleasant enough, the best part of Lago Maggiore is north with the mountains and islands.

With time to kill, we headed up the other side of the lake and found our way to Garinate. Throwing caution to the wind, we stopped at a lakeside restaurant down the hill from a nice residential part of the city. I voted no, Princess voted yes, so naturally we stopped in. Picture a log cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. You don't go there for the food. No one spoke a word of English, the menu was entirely in Italian and the food was mostly horrible. But the staff were all friendly in spite of the fact that I'm betting that they'd all done hard time somewhere.

And since we were in Garinate with time to kill, we decided to check out JMN57's suggestion of the Pasticceria Milano and the original Brutti e Buoni (Ugly and Good). Best stop of the day by far. Wonderful, friendly staff who were amused by the Americanis who had wandered in off the street. We got along famously with my Italian getting better every stop along the way. And the Brutti e Buoni and pastry were wonderful.

Just after 2:30pm and time to start winding our way to Malpensa looking to gas up before I got back to Avis. I stopped at four gas stations along the way but they were all self-serve, and none of the pumps like my credit cards (I found out later from the Avis staff that they don't accept credit cards). In the end, we just said effit and dropped the car off with a 1/2 tank. Amazingly, the total refueling charge was only 52 euros, not bad for 3+ days and at least 400 kms. It was probably cheaper than Avis would have charged me back home.