Lake Como

A gorgeous day to visit Lake Como. We took a ridiculously circuitous route to get to the town of Menaggio where we were to take a boat to Varenna. Big disappointment was in store when there was ABSOLUTELY zero parking available (becoming a really annoying issue) so we continued along the lake to the town of Cadenabbia where there is a ferry terminal and a PARKING PLACE!! AND there was a ferry arriving. We quickly got our parking paid, ran to get a ticket and I really didn't care WHERE it was going as long as I had a boat ride on Lake Como before the anticipated weather change tomorrow. It turned out that it was going to Bellagio, a really elegant town on a long peninsula that protrudes into the lake.
Bellagio from a distance

Bellagio with snow capped Dolomites

All the streets in Bellagio that are perpendicular to the shore involve long stircases

More Bellagio

t's quite touristy and wouldn't have been my first choice but the views from the lake were spectacular and it was fun to walk around a bit and look at all the fancy shops along the way. We spent a couple hours there then returned to drive a bit more along the lake hoping to find a place for lunch that also had a PARKING PLACE. No luck there and we ended up coming back to our home area to find a restaurant (and PARKING) where we had a nice lunch of two different seafood pastas and then some gelato. We stopped on the way home at an enoteca that had a really nice selection and picked up some wines to get us through the next few days. Enough fun for one day...we returned to our apartment and wandered through the nursery looking at the plants on offer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our Trip is Ending

Image
Tues 4/10- Fri 4/13/18 I still had in mind a visit to Varenna so we set out to first visit Dongo, site of Mussolini's capture and execution, and the plan was then to take the ferry from Menaggio to Varenna. The weather was pleasant though the forecast was for showers later and off we went to Dongo which is a bit further north on the lakeshore. There is a WWII museum in Dongo dedicated to the events surrounding the Mussolini capture that I wanted to visit though Dick was less than enthusiastic. The drive up the lakeside was beautiful with the distant Dolomites with their snow visible for the first time in a few days and we arrived in Dongo without incident and somewhat accidentally pulled into a parking lot that turned out to be the site of the museum. The museum was a strange little place of multiple small rooms separated by heavy drapes with each room with some sort of audio visual display. This part of north Italy was a very active partisan position and it's not someth...
Read more

On to Lake Como

Image
4/5/18 All packed and ready to go but we wanted to hit the farmer's market in Alba one last time even though we weren't going to buy anything that we had to haul with us. It's just fun wandering through the market and seeing what is there. Eels....ugly looking things Selling artichokes is easier if you trim them so nicely The drive to Dizzasco, our new place near Lake Como was just slightly complicated by a wrong turn and then not being able to find the place without stopping twice to ask for help. Our lodging is a 2 story house on the property of the owners plant nursery. There are two bedrooms and a bath downstairs and a kitchen and living-dining area upstairs so we're again in a place with lots of room to spread out. View from bedroom Living area Bathroom Bedroom Second bedroom being used to store cushions for outdoor furniture Kitchen/dining area We arrived around 3 so we had little time for anything other than the grocer...
Read more

A day in Alba

Image
3/30/18 The plan for today was to do laundry and explore Alba. Success on both fronts! We got the first load of laundry in the machine and headed out. Alba is a small enough town that it can easily be covered walking. We are on the main pedestrian street (see post from yesterday for pic) and after going to where there was supposed to be a tourist info office per the map (not there), we walked the pedestrian street into the main square (the square of the duomo of course) and there was the tourist information office. A rather simple duomo We picked up some maps and brochures and continued meandering around the town. There is food of all sorts everywhere you look! All very tempting to try everything but reason prevailed. After coming back to take care of the first load of laundry and to start the second, we went to lunch at Osteria del Vecchio Gallo (osteria of the old rooster.) It's a very small restaurant that was very nice and we had a really excellent lunch. We first disc...
Read more