Maccagno

Our first full day at the banks of Lake Maggiore at our campsite called The Camp by Maggiore Suites. It sounds very glamorous and the photos and reviews make this place look amazing, however 24 hours in and I’ve come to the realisation that they have used a lot of artistic licence with their photos and descriptions. Still - we’ve paid for 4 nights and it has super clean toilets and nice showers, so I’m not planning on cutting this stay short, it’s just very expensive for what it is.
We started off the day easy, no alarms so up just before 8am. Marla has got used to van life and no longer demands to get up at 6:30am everyday. We had a mid morning stroll into the village to find the local supermarket for fresh bread and cake shop for a little treat.
Lunch was lots of bread and cheese, followed by some very dainty cannoli. It was all a bit much and I had my first nap of the trip - although it’s not very easy to just lay down and fall asleep jn the van, I think I might have managed about 30 mins, then I was rudely awaken by our phones going off to let us know someone was ringing our doorbell… no idea who it was, looked like a salesman.
So to wake us all up we had a wander along the lake front, it warmed up a bit this afternoon so I braved the shorts and jumper combo which was perfect. We saw some interesting sites, some giant sheep garden ornaments, ceramic owls in a tree and ceramic colourful fish and birds along a wall.
Before dinner we popped across to the camp reception / bar to claim our welcome drinks. I opted for a Limoncello spritz, having never heard of this and it was amazingly tasty! I popped something onto Facebook and received loads of messages from people saying how they love it to - why had no one told me about this before?
We had planned to have a curry for dinner, but we were still pretty full from cheese and bread so went for a lighter pasta and veg option, with more bread 😂
The Italians have a very strange system for kitchen plugs - metal tubes. They really are the most impractical thing, it’s just annoying that the plug I picked up in Germany doesn’t fit these sinks and I had to give the metal tube a go. I’m not a fan.
This evening’s entertainment has come from watching a lot of new arrivals - for some reason people keep parking up across two pitches next to us, wandering off for a bit and then go and park somewhere completely different. The french lady with a caravan stuck on a van chassis won the day for us - she drove around the site at about 30MPH, almost taking a few people out at the same time…
The day did end on a sad note - we’ve managed to lose one of our knives…. Good job we hardly use both a knife and fork to eat with!Read more