Today we visited a couple of islands on Lake Maggiore. Both islands have gardens that I wanted to visit. We first went to Isola Bella and had to walk through palace before getting into the garden. The palace was built in the 1600’s with the gardens being completed in the late 1600’s. The palace was packed with tour groups, and it made it nearly impossible to get to each room very easily. We really just wanted to get to the gardens before most of the tour groups got out there. The gardens didn’t disappoint. It is really hard to imagine how they could design some of these things that long ago. This was also my first time seeing white peacocks.

We then took another ferry to Isola Madre. There was a larger botanical garden on this island. A Cyprus tree that was planted in 1862 was one of the main attractions of the island for years. It is a beautiful big tree near the palace. It was uprooted by a tornado in 2006. They quickly replanted it and it now being held up by cables but looks very healthy. There were also pheasants on the island that had unique colors. We finished visiting the island right as a big rainstorm started. We got pretty lucky to catch a ferry back without getting too wet.