Lake Como


Mark and Colleen were able to join us for a second weekend, this time exploring the beautiful and storied Italian Lakes region. The Italian Lakes are in northern Italy, near the foot of the alps, but well above the Mediterranean. It used to be considered one of the places everyone needed to go at some point in their life (although I think that’s stretching it a little). Regardless, it’s a pretty cool area, as you have large lakes that run up to the foot of the mountains, snow-tipped peaks in the background, cliffs, and some of the most stunning villas you’ll find anywhere in the world. In fact, I think this area invented the concept of the villa, and if they didn’t, they should have.

I was a little concerned going into this trip, as the weather is right at that point where it could either be nice or absolutely terrible. Luckily, it was about as perfect as you could have asked for, and coupled with the fact that it’s pre-tourist season, the conditions couldn’t have been better.

Outside of the lake and mountain views, the villas are the main attractions in Como. Located on mountain sides, sporting well-manicured gardens, the villas were spectacular, to say the least. One of the villas has been used as a movie set on a handful of films, most recently in the latest James Bond movie (it was also used as the backdrop to a terrible love scene in Star Wars - Attack of the Clones, but I think the James Bond thing makes up for it.) Not that we’re into going to places where movies were filmed or anything…although I guess this is the second time we’ve been somewhere from a James Bond movie in the past year. Doh.

We stayed at Bellagio, which was a good central location from where we could explore the other cities. None of the towns here are particularly large, but they all have winding streets, narrow alleys, great sea views, and multiple gelato shops. Bellagio was probably the best of them, and when you add in the fact that our hotel had a ridiculously great roofdeck, and nobody else really went up on it, then you have a recipe for awesomeness. Yes, that is a word – I believe it’s derived from a Latin word meaning "total sweetness". Anyway - we spent pretty much every day walking around doing stuff, coming back and resting, having some Prosecco on the roofdeck, going out to dinner, then coming back and having more Prosecco on the roofdeck. Not sure there’s a better way to spend a day, really.

Once again, we want to thank Colleen and Mark for visiting; we really had a lot of fun traveling with them, and it’s great to see familiar faces in an environment so far removed from where you’re used to seeing them. The only downside was that Colleen couldn’t back up her gelato trash-talking. She was all like "I can eat gelato 4 times a day", but in reality, it was only 3 times a day. Weak!

Next weekend: Stuttgart, Germany!