In which I should have packed a hat (Wales part I).

The third Grand Adventure of the summer whisked me and my good friend and neighbor, Simon, to northern Wales, where we spend a very wet week exploring castles and hiking in and around Snowdonia National Park. I'd never been to Wales before, and after a week spent driving around its winding roads, giggling at the funny words on the street signs, and swimming through cloud canopies on its misty mountains and lonesome hillsides, it now feels like an old friend.

It rained every day, making the rare moments of sunshine truly exquisite. After my recent trips to Norway and Italy, where it was generally very warm, I was not prepared for how cold it would be. Yes, I knew it would be coldER, but I thought, "Hey, it's August! Who needs warmies in August?" Anyone hiking in northern Wales, that's who. In any case, it was all part of the experience, and luckily we had an excellent hot shower in the airbnb and a fully equipped kitchen for cooking wonderfully warming, post-hiking grub.

Three days after returning from Italy, and after two days of orientation for my new job, I headed back to the airport and flew with Simon to Manchester, England-England, where we rented a car and he expertly flipped a switch in his brain that enabled him to drive left-handed on the left side of the road (genius-genius). We then pulled out a good, old fashioned paper map and headed for Wales.

It was still early in the day and we had some time to kill before we could check into our airbnb, so let spontaneity take the reins and ended up hiking for a couple hours around the summit and cliffs of Great Orme, near the seaside resort of Llandudno.

The old church was always open to travelers in need, and offered shelter from the wind and rain in a particularly windy and rainy hour.

On a good day, one can apparently see out to the Isle of Man from the summit. It was not a clear day, so we just saw some leek and potato soup at the summit café.

Once we'd had our fill of fresh sea air for the day, we continued around the coast to our airbnb, did a week's worth of grocery shopping, ate pizza and went to sleep with big plans for the next day.

The weather forecast was not optimistic, so we thought we'd try for a smaller mountain in Snowdonia to start things off, hopefully staying below the cloud cover. We packed a lunch, pulled out the maps, and headed into the park towards Yr Aran. The sky cleared for a very dramatic moment along the A5, the mountains on either side revealing their electric greenness against the shadows of the clouds. We pulled over as I needed to get out and jump around a little.

That was unfortunately the only clear moment, as the trail up Yr Aran soon disappeared in pea soup, hiding what was most assuredly a pulchritudinous landscape. After over an hour of climbing, we were very wet, very cold, and finally gave up hope about conditions improving. So back down we went, not wanting to get sick before all the fun began.

Things of course cleared up later that afternoon, so we went for a short walk to the beach near where we were staying and poked around there for a bit instead.

It was raining again the next morning, so we decided to have a peek around nearby Caernarfon. There was a little pirate-themed festival going on down by the water, but neither of us where in a particularly touristy mood and we didn't stay long after walking around the castle.

From there we headed back into the countryside on an adventure that would lead us to an ancient forest and a very peaceful, very purple hill walk. Next time.

In which we have the best of the rest (Lago Maggiore part III).

The next phase of our vacation was the stormy, sleepy one, where we had big, flashy storms that woke me most every night and a couple Weathery days as well, which we spent lazing about inside, watching movies, playing games, reading, cooking, and napping. When the weather was fine, like it was that Saturday, we got some fresh raisin bread from the little store up the hill and brunched outside in the cool of the morning, then went swimming in a lake topped with a layer of night rain.

One evening when the weather had cleared, we drove down to Maccagno for a walk and Romantic Pizza. As advised, we'd called ahead to reserve a table at the ristorante, and were pleasantly surprised to find they'd given us the tiniest table with the best sunset view.

It was there that I -- a true lover of dogs in all their forms -- saw one of the first pooches that I would really and truly judge as, well, ugly. Someone's precious angel, no doubt, but is that styling really necessary?

Afterwards we walked around the village alleyways on the mountainside, the old, colorful walls set a-glow by yellow streetlights.

It poured most of the last day we were there, though Steven and I did make one little excursion into Pino that ended with very wet feet. 

The sky cleared again later that evening and we went for a final swim, the clouds doing fun things in front of the blue mountain silhouettes. We had the whole beach to ourselves, and felt very smug about it too.
 

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One thing that surprised me was how little Italian I heard while we were there. Sure, it was Italy, bordered with the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, but most people around us were German or German-speaking Swiss families who, like our wonderful hosts, had purchased homes there and came down for the weekends now and again. In my German guidebook it said one thing to avoid was speaking German to people, and to always try and speak Italian first. So, we learned a few phrases, and by the end could buy stamps and order gelato, say please and thank you, the necessaries, and what we didn't know we tried in English first and generally had very friendly responses that way. Many of the locals depended on their German neighbors and tourists for their income, but I'd imagine they could be a little frustrated with them too. As with all neighborly relations, I suppose.

Our last morning was spent packing and cleaning up before making our way back to the little Pino train station. Our plane didn't leave Milan until later that evening, but with the questionable reliability of the train system we decided to play it safe and gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport. It was a good thing we did, too, for our first train stopped in Luino, where they announced that there wasn't enough personnel to keep driving and that we'd have to take the next train south in an hour. This was not ideal, but hey, gave us time for some more super ideal gelato.

That cancellation had us miss our connecting train in Gallarate, which gave us time to walk around there as well. A pretty town with fun murals and patterns in the streets. Most everything was closed, as per the Italian tradition of taking a good chunk of summer off to go on holiday, and it felt eerily quiet.
 

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Eventually we did make it back to the airport, and with plenty of time to catch our plane. For the most part we were glad for the train delays, as it gave us more time to see new places and less time spent waiting around in the less than cozy Malpensa Airport. A slow end to the loveliest of weeks. Mille grazie, grazie mille.

After a late arrival home, I had two very early mornings of new job orientation, and then headed back to the airport for Grand Summer Adventure #3: Wales. More on that later.