Villa Balbianello on Lake Como (a filming location for Casino Royale, the new Star Wars, and several other movies)
Buongiorno from Italia! What a change it has been to come to Italy. When we arrived in Como from snowy Switzerland yesterday afternoon it was still cloudy, but noticeably warmer. And today it was gloriously sunny and reached a high of 67! It is like we've been transported into another world, yet we only drove a little more than two hours.
Even though we knew what to expect, there was initially some culture shock in the change from orderly Germany and Switzerland to chaotic Italy. Navigating the old town of Como to find our hotel was something of an adventure! But of course it is all worth it for the sunshine and famous beauty of Italy, and we are very excited to be here.
We are staying at the Albergo del Duca, which is on the small Piazza Mazzini in the old town. It has an excellent location only a few minutes from the lake and from the cathedral. The downside is that it is in the pedestrianized district so our sat-nav only brought us to the closest plaza that allowed cars. That meant I had to hop out and ask a man at a magazine stand for directions. Fortunately I remembered how to say "where is" in Italian by the time I reached him, but after he gave me the directions I said Danke instead of Grazie. It has been a bit of an adjustment to change our language over!
We saw several other hotels named Albergo-Something and really wondered who this guy is, until I looked it up in my phrase book and discovered it means "hotel." Oops. Our hosts spoke little English but were very nice and helpful. We were able to park our car in a nice little courtyard next to the hotel, which was safely enclosed behind a wooden door each night. They even parked and extracted our car for us, which was great. Our room was smallish but nice and clean; we'd recommend it.
We've had such fun in Como. We spent this morning photographing Romanesque churches and the afternoon on a boat ride around beautiful Lake Como.
David woke up before I did and walked down to the pier on the lake to watch the boats and the fishermen. When I got up I met him down there, and we both soaked up our first real experience of warm sunshine in a long time. We intended to head back to the hotel for breakfast after that, but the Church of Sant'Abbondio (researched the night before) didn't sound too far away so we decided to go for it. In the end, it was a really long walk to the outskirts of town and we didn't make it back breakfast, but it was a great church and very much worth the trip. It was built in the 11th century.
Como Cathedral has not been left alone as well as Sant'Abbondio, but is still interesting and mostly Romanesque in its architecture.
A couple of other views of Como:
We stopped at a bakery on the way back to the hotel and had a brief rest before catching our boat ride. Missing a hotel breakfast is no big loss in Italy. Italians eat a multi-course dinner late at night (8-10pm) so they don't eat much of a breakfast, and the hotels reflect this. You usually get cold meats and cheeses, a hard roll or croissant, and some cereal and yogurt. Not bad and entirely adequate, but not exciting either. This basic "Continental" selection is similar in France, but the quality of the bread and croissants is usually much better!
Our lake boat ride left at noon. It was a slow ferry with open-air decks and it stopped at several picturesque villages along the way. The lake is so beautiful, surrounded by mountains on all sides.
After an hour and 45 minutes of scenery, we got off the boat in the village of Bellagio.
We wandered the narrow alleys and steep stone stairways for a couple of hours, David had a delicious cappuccino, and we had a tasty late lunch of pasta. Bellagio is said to be one of the prettiest towns on Lake Como and quite popular with tourists. Indeed, on the streets we definitely heard more English and German than Italian. (The German-speakers are suddenly just as "foreign" as we are!) But probably because it's the low season, it still didn't feel very touristy. Souvenir stands were almost nonexistent, the streets were quiet and peaceful, and everything still felt authentically Italian - just with a lot of happy foreign visitors. It was fantastic.
During the ride to Bellagio we had kept our eyes peeled for George Clooney's house. We had a general idea of where it was, but didn't really know what to look for. David finally asked the young deckhand about it - alas, we had passed it already. But we ended up boarding the same boat after Bellagio, and the same guy recognized David and said "I show you George!" He even promised to have the captain drive closer to the shore so we could get a better look.
George's house is pretty close to the city of Como so we had a long wait, but after an hour or so the captain did indeed go closer to the shore and blew his horn to get our attention. We looked up into the cabin and about five people, including the captain, were pointing to the shore and nodding enthusiastically. The young guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, "white one!" Good times.
I believe this appeared in one of the Ocean's movies, but can't remember which one. Unfortunately George isn't home right now (my academic research on People.com indicates he's in the USA promoting his new movie), or we might have driven back to take him out for an espresso.
We leave Como in the morning and we'll spend the next two days mainly working our way south along the east coast of Italy. Tomorrow we'll drive about four hours and stop for the night in Pesaro. Then we'll drive four more hours to Lucera, the first of two bases for exploring Puglia. Both days should be pretty uneventful, so hopefully we'll have time to post a few more photos and memories of Como to the blog tomorrow night or the next night.