Just enough news to digest with a cup of cappuccino...

The Lago Maggiore Solar Challenge 2009 will take place the 11 and 12 of July. The competition for solar-powered boats will begin in Dormelletto, with stops in several towns along the lake. Several of those towns will also hold exhibitions, explaining certain features of this innovative technology.

It has been announced that the London Symphony will open this year’s Settimane Musicale di Stresa. Other noted musical groups already set to appear are the BBC Philharmonic, the Palatino Concert, and the Israel Philharmonic Brass Quartet. The festival will run from May 2 to 17.

Plans were unveiled for the new theatre to be built in Verbania, near the lakefront. The exciting design, by Spanish architect Salvador Perez Arroyo, shows a building formed of four scultural shapes, a main theatre to hold 500, smaller theatre for experimental shows and conferences, a bookshop, bar, a restaurant, and underground parking.

Poll results: 31 of you responded to the question: Which of these people has NOT been to Stresa? And the answer is… Well, I sort of blew it. It turns out all of these people have been to Stresa. Ernest Hemingway visited many times between 1918 and the 1950s, in fact, he set part of his novel “Farewell to Arms” here; Winston Churchill spent his honeymoon in the luxurious Grand Hotel Des Iles Borromees; Benito Mussolini took part in the Stresa Front, the important, but ultimately unsuccessful meeting in Stresa on April 14, 1935 between the leaders of Italy, France, and Great Britain. The purpose of the meeting was to try to contain Nazi Germany; Princess Diana was in Stresa in 1984 when she and other dignitaries and celebrities visited the Borromeo family on Isola Bella; Gina Lollobrigida came in second at the second Miss Italy contest, held in Stresa in 1946; and George Clooney, well, I thought George had kept to himself on Lake Como but it turns out that he visited Stresa just this past summer to look at a property for sale. And how about you? Have YOU been to Stresa yet?