Following breakfast we met in the lobby where Antoine counted heads and then led us across the way to the hotel’s annex for the intro session.
The session included her introduction of herself, then each of us introducing ourselves. Then a slide show with important information – basically all the normal stuff you’d expect in that kind of deal.
It actually lasted until 10:30 so she delayed the next event by 10 minutes.

We set out on a walk around Stresa, a bit history, a bit orientation to the town.

At the appropriate time we arrived at a small wine shop in the center of town where we were presented with a ‘show and sample’ of significant Italian products including olive oil, basaltic vinegar, Italian seasonings, truffles, mushrooms, and of course wine. The presentation by the matriarch of the shop was outstanding, fun, and informative. I’m not sure how we got out of there without burning up a credit card or two. It was also interesting to sit thru the presentation on stools arranged down a row of wine selling for as much as €1,900.00 per bottle.
Escaping that opportunity to blow the kids’ inheritance we joined several others from the group for lunch at one of the local eateries. Cheryl and Billie shared the local standard Margarita pizza while I had the Tuna salad. It was all good, though I was a bit disappointed that the tuna was from a can, not from the ocean.

Returning to the hotel I got busy trying to catch up on the blog posting while Cheryl read and napped.

5:30 found us back in the annex for a presentation on the ‘cross-border workers’. These are people who live in Italy near the Swiss border and commute across the border to work – making somewhere between 2-3 times what they could make in Italy, but without the associated increased cost of living in Switzerland. It was an outstanding lecture, with solid treatment of the economics involved, both from the perspective of Swiss views and impacts on Italian communities. Certainly a complex topic and not a lot different (except for scale) to what goes on in border towns in the US where one state has sales tax and the neighbor doesn’t.

Following the lecture it was back to town to another small restaurant for an excellent dinner of vegitarian lasagna.

Dinner concluded (with tiramisu and coffee, of course) we walked back to the hotel to blog and prepare for tomorrow.
It’s another day out (with another possibility of rain) so we’ll see how it goes.

Till then,
R