Morning came with delicious fresh pastries at our door and the little bit of packing we needed to do.  I had planned to do our laundry in Badalucco, but the clothes had to be dried on an outside line and with the persistent rain and fog it was not going to work.  Oh well.

I got this early morning shot of the town from our room just before we loaded up the car and said goodbye to L’Adagio:

So, we drove east along the Mediterranean Sea and then turned North, just before Genova, to reach a town on Lago Maggiore called Arona, which I had never heard of before it popped up on the Airbnb map.  We had really minimal directions from the Airbnb host, which we couldn’t follow without going into the ZTL, and couldn’t find the host’s purported parking lots near the apartment. The town was packed with Sunday visitors, so we couldn’t even find street parking.  Finally, we found a free parking lot with space just next to the train station, and walked with our luggage about 20 minutes to the apartment. 

The place is roomy and has a washer and a real electric dryer!  What a find!

We threw the clothes in the machine and set out for a nice passeggiata along the lake front.  

There were tents selling jewelry and quirky crafts, but we were not really interested.  We sat on a bench on the marina for a while. 

I checked for groceries on google maps and we walked over a few blocks to one which was closed.  The next one had mostly Indian foods—lots of green mangoes but no yogurt.  

Since we had skipped lunch we made a reservation for an early dinner at I Grappolo, just around the corner from the apartment:

It was a cozy, sweet spot with a small menu and very friendly helpful service.  I had a really good mushroom sformito/flan and Ken started with prosciutto with a sweet fig cake.  Then I had duck breast with blueberry sauce and Ken had roast pork with an apple sauce.  They list on the menu a wine pairing for each course so we went with that, and were pleased with their choices.  

The clothes, in typical Italian washing machine fashion, were still not done when we came home from dinner.  

No regrets about the change of plans.  It is still Italy, afterall.