Greetings all!
I’m writing this from my hotel balcony at the Hotel Barchetta Excelsior while drinking a fine valpolicella. Did I mention I’m looking out at the lake? And all the houses looking down on the lake, all twinkling on their respective mountainsides?
Como, and the lake it’s next to is gorgeous. It’s the first place in Italy I really want to live in. Maybe not Como proper, maybe just one of the surrounding villages, but somewhere on this lake.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Yesterday started with us leaving Milan and going to silk museum here in Como. This was really cool, with all sorts of exhibits on how to get silk and then also all these older tools and looms to create the fabric. And then there was the section on dying, and block printing, and screen printing, and cylinder printing, and… well, you get the idea.
They also added a new exhibit that has a bunch of things made with silk, and while I don’t like high fashion, these examples were very interesting.
I’ve been joking with Jonna Hayden about this trip. She’s been saying she hates me because we get to go and she doesn’t, and I’ve been giving her hell back. However, I really wanted her at this exhibit because watching her geek out about the fashion would’ve been worth the price of admission.
Anyway, after the museum, we came to our hotel. Country Heritage Tours paid extra to make sure we all had lakeview rooms and I’m ecstatic they did. We overlook the Palazzo Cavour and then the lake and again I just can’t describe how beautiful the view is. I have taken pictures, and we I get around to picture posts, you’ll see what I mean.
We also discovered Larrie the Lariosour! Check out this link https://larrielakecomo.com/en/. Larrie is this delightful Loch Ness Monster-like creature, half-myth, half-commercial greed, and 7 feet of cuteness.
It took me about 3 milliseconds to decide to buy a stuffed Larrie for JJ. 2 of those milliseconds involved picking blue over green.
Anyhoodle, I’m gonna have fun playing that song for JJ when I get home because what’s better than a stuffed lariosaur? A stuffed lariosaur with a theme song!
After that we went back to our room to relax. Well, after buying this bottle of valpolicello. And some gelato.
We’ve been reliably informed that we’re to have a gelato a day while in Italy and we’ve tried to keep up!
We got up at 5 to go to mass at the local cathedral which was a block away. It, too, was gorgeous, even if I barely understood bits of the Italian. I did understand the Latin, though, so there’s that.
Then, yesterday evening, the tour company bought us all dinner. OK, fine, we paid for it as part of the trip, but you know what I mean. It was delicious as basically all of our meals here in Italy have been. We had a meat and cheese plate that was only good, not great, but that’s basically the worst of our eating options so far. Thank goodness we’re getting our steps in.
Today was a relaxing morning. We had nothing scheduled until 1pm, when we got on a boat and sailed up the lake. We saw some amazing villas, including George Clooney’s, and a bunch of places everyone agreed they would deign to live in if they had to.
My favorite part was the grotto at Nesso, which has this lovely waterfall. I’ll have pictures later.
Then we ended at Bellagio, where we had a caprese and a gelato. Doing our best to keep up with the gelatos—oh, hold on, I need to refill my glass. Anyway…
The boat trip was approximately 4 hours long and totally enjoyable. I like being on the water, though I find the rocking of the boat akin to rocking me in a cradle, so making me captain would be unwise as I’m likely to sleep on the job.
Tonight we had a delightful dinner, some wine, a delightful dessert, some drinks, and now I’m blogging, with some wine.
My liver is wondering what the hell happened this past week.
And now? Time to drink more wine!