Farnsniente

Our faithful Ford Kuga

Bye good car, it’s been fun

—

in
📍 Linate, Italy

Photos

Trip index

Summary

Breakfast then golf cart ride to our parked car. Drove to the Parco Giardino Sigurtà, an enormous garden (mostly) on the way to our final hotel, near the Milano Linate airport. It was beautiful with massive, perfectly manicured lawns, huge trees and plenty of flowers. We walked 5 kilometers and didn’t cover the whole thing. Lunch in the town of Valeggio then drove to our hotel, dropped our bags and went to the airport to return our car to Hertz. Sorted our luggage to be airplane appropriate, had a very mediocre dinner and called it a day.

Details

Today we start our trek towards home. We have our last hotel breakfast in a resort setting. We initially were excited to explore all of the exotic breakfast options on offer, but we’re over that and ingest some fruit, bread and cheese, and lots of their overly strong coffee. 

We’re already packed and we’ve prearranged for one of those long golf carts to take us (and others and everyone’s luggage) out to the car park. We load up the car, ensuring our luggage is fully hidden. We, being us, won’t be going straight to our new hotel but rather will be sightseeing along the way, at our favorite type of place, a botanical garden: Parco Giardino Sigurtà. 

We have a bit of trouble finding the place but are happy we made the effort. The place is gargantuan! At the entrance, in addition to collecting the entrance fee (less for us oldsters) they rent bikes and golf carts. They have oodles of each and are doing a land office business renting them out. 

What does all this mean? 1) the grounds are so huge you need help covering it all, and 2) those of us walking are constantly saying “careful, bike back”, or “watch out, here comes three more golf carts”. 

Thankfully the planning and tending of the grounds make it all worth it. The immense lawns go on forever and you wonder what those tiny things are over there… ah, they’re humans, far, far away, checking out some cool pond surrounded by flowering trees. We like to play the game “and what tree/flower/shrub is that?” 

Amusingly (to us) as we’re going along naming trees we see a hackberry followed by a mulberry. Well, not just a mulberry but with Italian bikers, off their bikes, up atop the stone wall, picking and eating mulberries. They insist upon giving me a handful and these berries are indeed delicious!

There’s also the big farm and the little farm, which we miss given how big this place is. We see the herb garden and pass on the massive labyrinth (complete with emergency exits in case you truly cannot get out). 

We eventually are gardened out and walk to the center of town where there’s a good variety of outdoor cafes offering lunch. In the shade at one place we order our usual drinks, a caprese salad, and the local delicacy: ravioli made with very thin pasta and delicious cooked meats. Add cheese, butter, and sage and you have a delectable lunchtime treat. 

Back in the car we reluctantly program three stops into the GPS: our hotel, gas, and the airport Hertz car return. It’ll be over an hour’s drive but much of it’ll be the autostrada. Fast going, punctuated by periodic waving of a charge card to pay the road toll. 

Bags dropped at the Belstay hotel and car gassed up, I carefully drive the final six kms to the airport. The turn-by-turn is always great until it’s not. At the final roundabout I circle two or three times till one of us shouts “There’s the sign for the rental car return!”

The big mystery, though, is whether Hertz will want financial compensation. This would be for those oh-so light scratches those nasty bushes added to the passenger side of car as I was forced to quickly drive by too close. In our favor the car’s filthy, it’s black, and the lighting in the rental car return area is dim. Fingers crossed and… No Charges! Multo Gratzi!

The hotel shuttle takes us back, albeit after an overly long 45 minute wait, and we relax and eventually have a Last Supper in the hotel restaurant. We do our final packing and have our clothes for the flight home already laid out. One last night in a hotel bed and we should be home. Fingers crossed!

Photos

We have one last breakfast in Sirmione, again inside, still afraid of the birds. We’re impressed by this couple also having breakfast. They’re outside and they’re taking advantage of everything on offer for breakfast including the wine. We wonder what pairs well with scrambled eggs.
We’re saved the drudgery of hauling our luggage all the way to the far off parking lot. On the golf cart ride we again get to see the interactions between the throngs of pedestrians and the big vehicles.
At Parco Giardino Sigurtà, a big garden that used to be the land of an old villa, we see all of the many features and planted areas and themes. It’s very impressive and well done. It’s also well appreciated. We’d never heard of it but apparently it’s a big deal. There are tons of people here. Only two Americans (us) that we could ascertain.
Lot of cypress and Japanese Maples. And oh so much grass.
They were very proud of this “horizontal sundial”. It was cloudy so we couldn’t compare its time to what time our smart watches thinks it is.
They had lots of plantings and they had loads of grass. It all looked quite healthy and happy. The climate here must be amenable to living things.
We spotted a mulberry tree and weren’t the only ones. These bike riders were up on the wall picking (and eating) very ripe berries. When they saw us they insisted, in their best Italian pantomime, that we need to give them a try. I’m handed a few berries and they are really sweet and flavorful. Worth spending the time picking. (Now will silk come out of my butt? hm…)
They had beds of flowers they appear to get changed out regularly and of course perennials, like these happy roses.
They have land plants and water plants. Karen’s reflections in one of the Lilly ponds.
We missed a big section with the two farms.
We intentionally skipped the huge labryinth. It has a long list of rules, one of which is “use the emergency exits only if you’re totally lost”.
After the gardens we walk back into town for lunch. There’s an impressive town hall (we think that’s what it is) on a big piazza. Also there were many good cafés for lunch. We chose one at random.
Karen had the Caprese salad, wishing for basil, and I had the local special, the ravioli di Vallegio, Vallegio being the name of the town we’re in. The ravioli is unique in how thin and light the pasta wrapper is. I had it with butter and sage, with some parmesan sprinkled on the top. It was divine.
Next we returned the car, our trusty Ford Kuga hybrid. This is a picture from when we picked it up (thus its clean appearance). I’m not usually a Ford or domestic car buyer, but we had two Ford Kugas on this trip and I’d happily own one for driving around Europe.
At the airport the hotel said their shuttle guy would be along shortly to pick us up. They said this for 45 minutes and the sun was blazing down. They eventually came and in the end didn’t charge us for the rides, given how late they were. An Uber or Lyft, for the six mile drive? Like 40 bucks!
Back at the restaurant we have our last supper in Italy. I get a bean and barley soup and grilled vegetables and Karen gets the mystery cut of chicken, grilled. We think it was chicken. Maybe.