May 26th, 2017 – Bellagio, Italy
The drive to Bellagio from La Spezia will be a little over 3 hours. Bellagio is a small lakeside village that sits on a spit of land that separate where Lago de Lecco and Lago de Como join into one giant lake. When you look at the two lake on a map, they appear to form a walking man. Bellagio sits right in the “crotch” so to speak. On previous trips Elisa and I have stayed a Como and we’ve taken the boat ride up to Bellagio, which we think is one of the most enchanting of towns that dot the steep sides of the lake. This time we thought we would stay in this little town.
Our trip from La Spezia proceeded quite nicely. The Autostrada is nice and wide until you get past Monza, home of a famous motor speedway. Then the highway begins to wind up and down through the mountains and the speed limit goes from 130 Kp/h to 90. When you reach the small town of Lecco, which sits at the base of Lago Di Lecco, the divided highway ends and you begin taking smaller roads to reach Bellagio. Once you get out of Lecco the road is now very narrow and you must hug the side of the mountain in order to accommodate the 2 way traffic. The closer you get to Bellagio the narrower the road becomes. Amazingly, here the speed limit is 70 Kp/h but what little traffic there is seems to go much slower owing to the narrowness of the road. Several times we encounter some crazy Italian driver in a beat up old work truck, who thinks he is Mario Andretti taking the hairpin turns at breakneck speed and in the process drifting into my lane. Often we have to break and swerve as close as possible to the side of the road contained by the sheer mountain cliff. Our two vehicles avoiding each other by mere inches. Yet the offending driver honks and sneers at me, as if I were the one committing the offense whilst they were zipping down the mountain using the entire road way. At one point along the way, we encounter a large Pullman sized passenger bus. It is making its way around a tight turn just as we approach. The bus and I must come to a complete stop. The bus inches over to its side of the road, I can now proceed to a point that is only to the midsection of the bus but with its tail protruding past its rear wheels, it extends into my lane and it is too narrow for me to get past. However, by my pulling forward, the bus now has a bit more room to complete the turn making enough room for me to get by the back end of the bus. The driver gives me a wave and nod of approval for undertaking the roadside “ballet” maneuver without incident.
As we approach Bellagio, with out incident we are relieved but our relief is soon wiped away as we begin to enter the tiny ancient part of the village. The road is now one way and barely wide enough for our mini-van, not to mention that it is also swarmed with tourists. This road makes the one in Positano seem like a super highway. As we approach the gate to the villiage, there is a small open space to the side of the road.. I pull over thinking that there is no way our mini-van will be able to make it through the sea of pedestrians and down the narrow lane. I contemplate turning around, but one of the residents tells me it is “Senso Unico” one-way. So, I press a button on my dashboard and the side view mirrors neatly fold in – that is how narrow the street is. As I inch forward the pedestrians begin to part – I’m feeling a bit like Moses, but with his followers in the mini-van. The ladies in our car are totally freaking, but undistracted and undeterred I press on. Pedestrians are having to step into doorways of shops as we make our way past them. Trent captures this on video – I’m not sure why, the sight of this will surely be burned into his and Carolyn’s memory banks for years. Finally we emerge at the bottom of the town. I’m pleased to say that no pedestrians were injured in the making of Trent’s video. We see our hotel up ahead, the little Piazza in front of the row of hotels is full of cars and we are wondering where will we park. Fortunately the space in front of our hotel is wider than when we were in Positano. If necessary, I can pull over and unload luggage without causing another international incident. However, Minerva, the goddess of hope is with us on this day. Just as we pull toward our hotel, a car backs out of a space that is directly located in front of our hotel. What luck, and it just so happens that Elisa had found a lucky 2 centissimi coin just this morning. I think she had to use all 2 cents worth of good fortune, one for helping us make it through the narrow roads and the other for us to score this prime parking space.
Finally parked and adrenaline filled from the drive down, we then make the 38 steps up to the lobby of our hotel, we are told that our rooms are not yet ready and that we can leave our bags here. Fortunately for us, Carolyn has packed a few days things in the giant handbag she purchased while we were in Cinque Terre, so we can leave Moby in the car. Neither Trent nor I had enough adrenaline to take Moby up the steps. We spend the day walking and shopping our way through Bellagio. Carolyn finds a few nice things in a store where they craft items out of local wood. The workshop is connected directly to the store. We end up near the bottom of a hill and we take a walk out to Punto Spartiva. There are some stunning villas tucked off of the narrow roadway. There are high walls that are ornately decorated, that hide the large villas from the prying eyes of the the tourist (like us) that make their way down to Punto Spartiva. When we emerge, the view is once again spectacular. There is a picturesque park there that opens up to lake Como. You can see all the way down one end of the lake to the other. There is a nice cafe / restaurant there, but we are full from the lunch we had after we checked in. We ate at a small cafe named Far Out. The food is good and fresh. We are all a bit tired of heavy lunches so 3 of us opt for the “small” cheeseburger with fries to change things up. We order some bruschetta and a charcuterie plate as a starter and Carolyn has the minestrone soup for lunch. After we make a lap of the town, Elisa and I decide to head up to the room to get some rest and Trent and Carolyn decide to make another lap around the town. Having seen all the stores, Carolyn decides to go back to one at the very top of the hill to buy a few things she had seen earlier.
Later that evening at about 8:00, we all get back together and walk the sidewalks at the bottom of the village that is adjacent to the lake. There is still a little bit of daylight but night is coming. There is music that fills the air of the town. Apparently there is a wild wedding party going on just down the hill from our hotel, in fact it’s almost directly below our room. We are concerned that if it goes as late as Alessio’s wedding party, we will be up all night. Interestingly, the Italian DJ at the party is playing a lot of 80’s disco and dance music. It’s a lot of fun doing the hustle in the streets of Bellagio.
We happen upon a nice restaurant that is part of the Hotel Metropole and it sits right on the water. We enquirer, but they are fully booked, they tell us to come back at 9:00. This means a 30 – 40 minute wait. We find a comfy spot at the cafe attached to the restaurant where we can sip some apertivos. Carolyn and I order the Passion Mojitos and Trent a beer. The passion mojitos are tasty and made with real passion fruit. If you order one of these in the states, it has some sweet sticky artificial passion fruit flavored syrup in it. Not these here. It is filled with real genuine passion fruit. Now, have you ever had real passion fruit. This tangy tropical tasting fruit is made up of hundreds, if not thousands of tiny seeds with a pulpy fruit. Sort of like a pomegranate but but the seeds are slimy and sticky. The it tastes really good but the only problem is that you cant take a sip of the tasty concoction without getting a mouthful of the sticky, pulpy seeds. They are gooey and sticky and difficult to get rid of us. Carolyn and I briefly contemplating using the seeds as ammunition for our straws, but we quickly decide that such activity might be frowned upon in this “classy joint” and it could elicit the “International Eye-roll”. So instead, Carolyn sticks out her toung that is now covered with scads of the little buggers so that Trent can take a photograph. I’m not so sure the pea-shooter idea wouldn’t have been a better option. While we sit there and enjoy our drinks a couple of ducks befriend us and Carolyn begins feeding them loads of potato chips. They seem to enjoy them.
Finally we are called for our dinner at 9:30. Our waiter seats us at a lakeside table and promptly disappears for 30 minutes. We notice that one problem with lakeside dining is that where there is a lake there are many ducks. The ducks who had befriended us at the cafe have followed us from the cafe to our dinner table – the fact that we were feeding them all those potato chips might have something to do with the companionship exhibited by these ducks. Well, we learned that potato chips and ducks may not get along because one duck decides to go potty right beside our table – practically on top of Trent’s foot. We are quickly overcome by the odor. Not the most appetizing thing. Fortunately we have some water left in our water bottles and Trent is able to wash it down into the lake – we hope its the lake and not another set of tables below us.. Now that we can breathe again it only take a few more minutes for our eyes to stop watering and we can continue enjoying the beautiful night air and the lake.
Our waiter finally reappears and Carolyn gives him the “International Eye-roll” and he apologizes profusely. Carolyn adds one additional eye-roll, as if silently telling him not to let it happen again. Finally, we place our orders. Elisa opts only for a salad. Trent and Carolyn partake in the ham and melon and I in the Bresaola – a raw cured and salted meat carpaccio served with arugula and a creamy goat cheese. It is yummy. For mains, Trent gets the lamb chops, Carolyn small shrimp cocktail and I get the lasagna. There is also a plate of grilled vegetables that Trent and Carolyn share. For once we are not totally stuffed as we head back to our hotel room. Throughout dinner, we are serenaded by such classics as, YMCA, Play that Funky Music, Brick House. It’s oh so romantic.
With dinner done we make our way back to the hotel and shoot for a 9:00am departure. We will be heading to Venice with a stop in Verona along the way. The trip to Verona is about 2-½ hours. We will spend a hour or 2 there then we will head on to Venice, which is another 1-½ hours away. But that will just get us to parking at Tronchetto and we will have another hour of travel by foot, monorail and water bus or taxi to get to our apartment.
We are excited and once again exhausted.
Ciao for now.
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