Jun 05 2011
Our view for the weekend: Lake Como
Lake Como View
Since I last posted, we’ve traveled from Amsterdam to Italy. We met up with Jay’s parents in Milan, and yesterday we drove up to Lake Como. I actually did the driving! It wasn’t bad—Jay’s a great navigator, and we only kinda got lost once and almost went to Switzerland!
We’re spending three nights here before we head down to Tuscany. We’re staying in the little town of Tremezzo, which is on the west side of the lake. When Jay and I visited here in 2000, we stayed in Varenna, which is on the east side. There are some lovely little towns here on the west, but unfortunately the main road running up along the lake on this side runs right through the towns, so there is a constant din of traffic. We’re going to head to Bellagio and/or Varenna tomorrow on one of the boats, so it will be interesting to see if they’re still as quiet and peaceful as Jay and I remember from our last visit.
So I’ve posted some photos from the last day or so you can check out (see photo set on Flickr). They mostly include some views of the lake, and our visit to the Villa Carlotta botanical gardens, which are right down the road from where we’re staying:
Villa Carlotta is the most famous public villa of Lake Como, in particular for its centuries-old 70,000sqm botanical gardens. . . . It was built, as a summer home, by Marquis Giorgio Clerici, an important gentleman from the Spanish and Austrian Milan.
The gardens are very beautiful and varied–including bamboo, pines, azealas, citrus fruits, hidden pathways, arbors, etc.
Jay’s a great navigator? So how do you “kinda almost end up in the wrong country”? We all know that Jay works in mysterious ways, but…….
Hope to see you sometime.
I knew someone was going to wisecrack about that! But, yes I do work in mysterious ways–our “wrong” turn landed us not in Switzerland, but at a café with gelato!
However, for the record, we “can see Switzerland from our backyard” from where we are in Italy. And, for details on that “wrong” turn, if you look at where the A9 goes to meet the SS340 at Como Nord on the map, you can see how a “wrong” turn off there might take one right to the border (the gray line).