Hotel Fontaine Bleue Orta San Giulio

There isn't much to report here. We didn't go anywhere this weekend. But here are a few of my discoveries:

- Nutella belongs on...everything. Nutella Apples? Sure. Nutella bread? Yes please. Nutella pretzels? Absolutely! Nutella on last nights "meatloaf"? I would have probably actually eaten it that way!

- Swiss chocolate is d...

We finally got a new project for studio! Sort of. After several days of debating what the project is and where, we finally separated into groups by city. Our choices were Riva, Chiasso, Como (Italy) and Milan. I chose to work in Chiasso, Switzerland. It is right on the border of Italy and Switzerland, and we have been looking the idea of identit...

Today we went to Lugano. I have found my home, and dont ever need to go back to the US. This place was unbelievably beautiful. We did realize how expensive Switzerland is, but it is so clean!! Louis Vuitton runs rampant in Lugano. There are 16 year olds with bags that are worth as much as my car.

Our trip to Lugano made us realize how e...

So I guess I've been in Riva for a couple of days now (8 to be specific) but things have been pretty crazy and getting all the Spain stuff up has been a lot of work in itself! I'll try to give a brief view of what's been going on. I'm going to go around and take pictures of the villa, and of Riva itself but this takes so much time!
So my re...

We got to the Villa around 8:30pm on Monday night. We were greeted by two girls (clearly waiting for us to get there to check out our boys) who were communications majors. They were super and admitted up front that they really had no business being here, they "just wanted to be in Switzerland." YES! We had our first taste of Luigi's (our cook) a...

The next morning, we actually expected to stay in Locarno considering that rain was announced over the following day. On the other hand, we were eager to get back up the mountain and finally meet our biggest challenge: the Simplon pass!

At 10 o'clock dad had finished his emails and looking out of the window the rain was slowly decreasin...

We visit our fifth and final lake today - the smallest of the lakes we have visited in the region. The town of Orta on the lake by the same name boasts a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Sacred Mountain. The mountain is a gorgeous natural reserve where 20 Renaissance and later Baroque and Rococo chapels were built starting in 1590 and continuing ...

14/8/07 Day 16 Ohh my, I got my wish, no more mampy pamby stuff for us, first a nice scenic drive through the alps, up to 2400 feet above sea level, horizontal with glaciers, snow on the ground and windy steep roads, no trouble for George. However I haven't mentioned we were towing Nelly (that not so small metal box) at the time. More than a bit...

Friday 7th June Our last day in Orta San Giulio. Packed first thing, then headed off out to Isola San Giulio. We had noticed that the boats always made straight for the jetty on the southern end of the island, and invariable followed the same route back to Ortan San Giulio. For some reason, we were very fortunate to be take out around the northe...

Tuesday 4th June We didn't arise till 8.30. Went for our morning walk around the peninsular. As we approached the car park, I remembered that I had forgotten to move the car into another "free" spot, closer to the village, last night. At this point, residents of Station St. should appreciate that there are extenuating circumstances. There is onl...