{"id":8916,"date":"2024-08-10T09:22:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T09:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/weekend-lake-maggiore-switzerland\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T09:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T09:59:23","slug":"weekend-lake-maggiore-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/weekend-lake-maggiore-switzerland\/","title":{"rendered":"From Zurich To Lake Maggiore: Discovering Ascona, Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a quick 24 hours stop in Zurich, we caught the train to the Ascona, home to the Eden Roc Hotel<\/a> \u2013 set right on the banks of Lake Maggiore.<\/p>\n

Lake Maggiore \u2013 along with Lake Como and Lake Garda is one of those amazing lakes you find in Italy. It\u2019s also one of those places that\u2019s typically home to the rich and famous and a popular vacation spot for many-a-traveller like ourselves. It\u2019s also about 2 hours away by train (nearest stop is Locarno) or 2.5 hours by car from Zurich and so, rather easy to get to.<\/p>\n

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The journey through the Swiss countryside is also quite picturesque and goes down rather well with a glass or two of bubbly (just saying\u2026<\/em>).<\/p>\n

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Ascona is on the more Italian side of Switzerland… which brings me to a little sidebar – Switzerland has 4 official languages \u2013 French, German, Italian and Romansh. Zurich is on the more German side (and the architecture there reflects that too), Geneva is more French (Architecture also reflects that), Ascona here is more Italian and as for Romansch, I\u2019m still trying to figure out the heritage of that one.<\/p>\n

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The Hotel Eden Roc<\/a> is part of a small family of rather fancy hotels in fantastic locations in Europe and this particular hotel is very much old school Italian glam. The designer (who we coincidentally got to meet the next day on the pier while having drinks) looks and dresses like someone you\u2019d see as the patriach in a Dolce and Gabbana advert.<\/p>\n

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We wasted very little time settling in, tucking into the welcome basket (that lunch in Zurich didn\u2019t last us long thanks to all the walking around)\u2026.<\/p>\n

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\u2026before heading out to catch the last of the sunset \u2013 bubbly in hand. (Yes, there was a lot of that going on over the time we spent here \u2013 not that I\u2019m complaining about that of course).<\/p>\n

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Another huge reason why we visited Lake Maggiore and Eden Roc<\/a> was a huge party that was happening that very evening. It was a party quite unlike any other I\u2019d attended and I did have any clue about it until we were asked to head to the kitchen for dinner.<\/p>\n

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The kitchen was all lit up once we arrived, DJ at the ready and amazing food almost magically appearing in every single corner of the kitchen! There were about 40 or so of us in total \u2013 some of whom I knew, other who I would get to know over the course of the night (and what was bound to be an inevitable hangover the next day). It was incredible!!! (I\u2019ll have the video on Facebook<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> very soon).<\/p>\n

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There was even a section of the kitchen where you could see the incredibly talented chefs whipping up some amazing meals for the evening. In retrospect, I guess, I\u2019d kinda done something similar in Copenhagen but that time, we had to make our own stuff \u2013 this one had the gourmet chefs delighting and surprising up at every corner we turned – quite literally too!<\/p>\n

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Seeing as I\u2019d started with bubbly, I decided to stick to that \u2013 Lloyd switched over to the red and it wasn\u2019t 2am that we finally hit the hay back at the suite in the hotel. Talk about a welcome to Lake Maggiore, eh?<\/p>\n

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The next morning, I woke up rather surprisingly hangover free (very much to my delight – though I think my greed from wolfing down too much delicious food had a huge part to play with that) and, so after breakfast, we headed down to the pier by the lake where the hotel had arranged for a boat to take us to what they promised was a delightful island in the middle of the lake.<\/p>\n

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For starters, the idea of an island in Switzerland (which is one of the smaller or perhaps even one of the smallest countries in Europe) seemed like a surprise in and of itself.<\/p>\n

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Then there was the \u2018boat\u2019 – which definitely wasn\u2019t your average boat. This boat was built like a restaurant on the ‘ground floor’ with a bar at the back and the upstairs being more of a lounge area – complete with chairs and bean bags.<\/p>\n

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The views as you sailed through the lakes were absolutely amazing \u2013 snow-topped mountains which dipped into the lakes, cascading colourful houses and those natural mountain silhouettes Italy and Switzerland are famous for \u2013 all soaked up with glasses of bubbly as we sailed by (hey \u2013 I did say there would be a lot of this over this weekend).<\/p>\n

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Soon enough, we started to see where we would be spending the afternoon appearing in the distance\u2026 that place was Brissago Island \u2013 home to a stunning villa and beautiful gardens!<\/p>\n

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But more on that in my next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a quick 24 hours stop in Zurich, we caught the train to the Ascona, home to the Eden Roc Hotel \u2013 set right on the banks of Lake Maggiore. Lake Maggiore \u2013 along with Lake Como and Lake Garda is one of those amazing lakes you find in Italy. It\u2019s also one of those … Continue Reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,396],"tags":[1009,355,1010,407,1011],"class_list":["post-8916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","category-travel-journal","tag-ascona","tag-europe","tag-lake-maggiore","tag-switzerland","tag-ticino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}