Fisher's Europe 2012: Lake Maggorie/Milan/Athens

Lake Maggorie/Milan/ Athens

Moved a little further west to Lake Maggorie and stayed in Stresa. Lovely views and we visited the three islands that are in the lake. It was a very peaceful two nights and well worth the visit but Bellagio wins the lake’s contest.

We then moved down to Milan. By this stage the weather was HOT-well over 30c and not cool at night. We dropped the car off at one airport (not the one we were flying out off) on Monday and caught the local bus back to the city. Each night we dined in the ‘venice canal’ part of the city. For those who haven’t been to Milan they have a custom of happy hour food/aperitif package. For a E1 or E2 surcharge on your drink each restaurant has a huge buffet that you can partake in as many times as you like. One night we had one drink each plus the buffet for a total of E16. I am not really sure how they make money but on the Sunday night the place was a buzz (see canal photo). On the Monday night Italy played Ireland in the Euro2012 cup. Needless to say we watched some of it and with a 2-0 win to Italy they now move onto the quarter finals.

Tuesday morning and time to leave Italy. Booked ‘EXPRESS’ train (7 stops?) to airport at 7.55am. Needless to say they cancelled that one but we eventually got to the airport and caught an Aegean Airlines flight to Athens. Arrived in Athens at 2.30 then train to hotel by 4.00pm. I had booked the hotel using United Airlines frequent flyer points so wasn’t really sure what it would be like. It is a ‘funky modern’ hotel with bright colours and good rooms (fairly sparse) but great AC and a pool/bar/cafe on the roof. As we had a really early start we just hit the pool, had a drink and lay around poolside to 7ish then sorted out our gear and then went back up to the rooftop for a hamburger and glass of wine as the sunset over the acropolis (see photos from pool deck). We are also staying here after 2 weeks on the Greek Islands so we could leave any gear in storage at the hotel. We dumped 2 bags full of winter stuff and now have only one medium case plus one small cabin bag.