Panaormic pic of Lake Como from the northern end of the lake.
(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
Truth be told, we didn't actually start our honeymoon at
Lake Como. We first took a
train from
Zermatt to Milano
Centrale, where we walked past the Milan Duomo
to find our hotel,
the Hotel Spadari . Our room was OK
, not great, but we
were just spoiled from the elegance of the
Zermatterhof in Zermatt. The staff was super nice, and the gave us a bottle
of champagne to commemorate our wedding. Before going to dinner, we walked
around Milan a little, did some
window
shopping at the high end fashion outlets and finally came back to the Duomo
to take a few more pix
We also got a
cute video of kid screaming at the
piegons (be patient, videos take a long time to download!) The next day, we
headed to Europcar to pick up our
VW Passat for our journey across Italy.
Finally, we began that Italian pastime that can loosely be described as driving, but more closely resembles a drunk playing golf (i.e. all over the fairway). It took me a while to adapt to the randomness of the driving, as driving laws are not really enforced as far as I can tell. Lane markers are merely suggestions.
Well after an adventure from driving out of Milan, we headed the 1 hour north
to Como
, to the
Hotel Villa Flori which was
located just south of Cernobbio on the
shores of Lake Como
. Here's the spectacular
view from our terrace.
. Later on we headed out to
dinner, and drove up to Cernobbio
where we had dinner at this
perfect resturante. The great thing about this place was that all of the other
resturants required reservations, so we drove to the very end of the village
where we found this pizzeria called "La Sosta". As it turned out, it was a local
hangout place, and we were the only non-Italians there. The meal was great, and
we ended up learning some new Italian over the course of the meal. Afterwards,
we headed back to our hotel where I took this great pic from our balcony.
The next morning,
we took the
ferry from Como to Bellagio (no not the
hotel, the village
) where we walked around the
beautiful pedestrian cobblestone streets
. There were a few spots
where you could stop and get a view of the mountains and water as well
.
On the last day, we revved up the car ato drive up the
western coast of Lake Como, which was an incredible adventure. A lot of the
roads were single lane or very narrow 2 lanes and would wind its way thru little
villages. It was always interesting to deal with oncoming traffic that is headed
straight for you, and you have no where to turn. On top of this little escapade,
it decided to rain. Yuk. Anyway, we made it up to a random road that took us up
one of the mountains, which is how I took the panoramic shot at the top of this
page. We also found random monuments along the way,
.
On the return trip south to Como, we stopped in Menaggio
for some lunch, where we stumbled upon a neat little market selling clothing,
Italian meats
and candy
. Lastly, we strolled thru
the village a little more
, but once we reached our
car, we were soaking wet.
From Como, we headed to our next major destination, Tuscany.