With Andrew’s house still in the throes of renovation and Beck’s parents also arriving for a holiday, we take a side jaunt from Switzerland into Italy to releive some of the pressure on space at Andrew’s and take in a spa in Bormio which we had originally planned to visit after Slovenia until plans to meet up with Andrew, Mel, Freyja and the Specks in Domaso on Lake Como put paid to that (in a good way – we had a great weekend with them all but the spa at Bormio was no longer en route).
The drive there consists of multiple mountain passes culminating in Stelvio which takes us down to Bormio. We’d done Stelvio before when we had the V-strom motorbike but the Nissan Note bravely holds its own on the hairpin corners!
Our hotel of choice is the Hotel Alu which offers a good location to explore the area. We opt for half board and the food is generally good although some options are a little out-there – cured fish and fruit is one particular main course option! But given that there is an antipasti buffet, pasta course, main course and dessert every day, we always manage to be full at the end of the meal.
Over the course of five days we do three decent walks taking in the local mountains, a reservoir and meadows of wild flowers. On the second of these, the reservoir walk, we are struck by the irony of leaving the Hope Valley with its three major reservoirs to come to Italy, just to walk around a different body of drinking water! Still the scenery is very different between the two and Ladybower doesn’t offer campari spritz on it’s shore (perhaps it should!) On our first day we spot a cute little riverside bar on our orientation walk which we return to a couple of times for aperativo at the end of a long day hiking. On one occasion we are tucking into drinks, crisps and olives when a plastic dinosaur lands on our table. The family at the next door table are highly apologetic, and their toddler becomes shy when Beck returns the dinosaur with a roar, but we find the whole thing hilarious – perhaps helped by the fact that we are on our second round of drinks!
The highlight of the whole stay though, has to be the Bagni Vecchi Spa. We book in for the minimum duration which is four hours. Beck doesn’t hold much hope of Ben lasting anywhere near that long in a spa but we are amazed at the sheer size and variety of things to do could easily have stayed longer in the end. It helps that forty five minutes of time is given over to a free aperativo session in the bar complete with olives, cheese and salami, focaccia, pizza and savoury muffins, plus unlimited prosecco, beer and compotes to make cocktails such as peach puree to make a Belini and cherry puree to make a Kir Royale. It’s a great intermission to lazing about in the thermal pools. As well as a fabulous infinity pool overlooking the valley, the spa also offers original Roman baths, outdoor hot tubs, cave system leading to the source of the thermal spa, various saunas with different aromas (think lavendar, hay etc), mud treatment in the salt cave, numerous relaxation rooms with different themes and facilities, jacuzzi pools of varying temperatures, arm chairs with rollers to massage tired feet…… the list goes on. Beck enjoys the toiletries in the changing rooms so much that she buys a set to take away. It’s really a brilliant place to spend a few hours after some significant hikes and we dream of coming back in the winter to sample the delights after a day on the ski hill… Watch this space!