Lago Iseo

Again I am going to start out with a confession – WTF is Italy doing to me?!  Going to church, giving confessions, crying….this place is magical I tell you!  Actually, for the first two days I decided that Lake Iseo sucked arse, mostly because it rained non-stop during that time.  This little sunshine kitty does not like cloudy days and it certainly does shade my bright and cheery outlook on life (right…) with thunderstorm-sized clouds.  At a point when I started contemplating ending my trip early and just coming home, I finally decided it might be a good idea to check the weather to see how long the storms would really last (as in life, they never last long).  This is when I found out that two of the villages I visited in Cinque Terre had washed into the sea from all of the rain and I decided to stop bitching about anything (thanks, Mom, for being one step ahead of me on all of the news and crap!).

By Day 2, the rain had stopped long enough that I could get out of the frickin’ cold ass hotel and go buy some sweaters.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it is the cutest place I have ever seen which it is run by an Old Italian Grandmother and her kids – she even prepares your café lattes in the morning and turns the bed down at night (first jail cell I have stayed in on my budget to do that!), but they only turn the heat on once during the morning hours.  I thought the first day that the heat was broken, then I figured out the family was just being cheap, so I love them but I also think they are jerks at the same time (kind of like most people do about their families).  Now I that I have a few sweaters, I am warmer and happier, but I need to find a post office to mail back the summer stuff that I didn’t get to wear because it wasn’t warm enough anyway.

Finally on Day 3 the clouds broke, the sun came out and my mood lifted with the flood of Vitamin D.  Hallelujah!  Of course, I was supposed to check out of my hotel and head somewhere.  To where, I hadn’t quite figured out yet, so I decided it was good to stay one more day, enjoy the lake and then come up with a plan.  I got on the tourist taxi over to the large island, Monte Isola where I hiked much of the afternoon.  There was a point when I almost slid off the side of the hill (it had been raining you know, and the Italians really don’t give much thought to stabilizing their hiking trails – if your dumbass is going to be out hiking then you risk falling off the mountain, so be it) that I thought maybe this wasn’t the brightest of ideas, being in the middle of nowheres-ville Italy with no ID and no one really knowing where I was to fall off the side of the damn hill.  So, I turned around and ended up on a different route that went up through the mountain rather along the side of it (of course, it was way too logical to just stop hiking at this point, plus my body needed to move after 3 days of sitting inside to hide from cold and rain!).

When I got to a place where the trees broke to reveal a gorgeous panoramic view of the island and lake, I stopped to catch my breath and take a picture.  At this point, I asked out loud “Where am I going anyway?” then turned around to see a picnic table……seriously!  “I guess I am going to have lunch”, I thought, so I sat down and enjoyed the picnic I had packed for myself that morning and hung out with the dog that came to beg for half of my sandwich (she did not get it, but I did offer her a piece of apple, which she refused.  I guess not all dogs like fruit and veggies like mine – losers).

Thank goodness my dumbass was I the Scouts because I was able to find my way back down the mountain. After taking the tourist taxi back to Iseo, I had a wonderful dinner of seafood risotto.  I know that all of you picky eaters will be grossed out, so you don’t have to look at the picture because there are seafood parts in the seafood risotto, and they were DE-li-cious!