Friday May 9th

We departed our attic room for a nice breakfast in the hotel and a pleasant sunny day to explore the Lake. A cruise around the lake seemed the obvious option until the information centre explained that due to a strike, the boats would not be working until 1:00pm. Mercifully our time was one thing we have plenty of in Italy so this little hiccup did not dampen our day compared to the rest of the touring population. So on to another plan and this one was a scenic ride on a very steep tram up to the top of the mountain that surrounds Lake Como, to take in the stunning views.

After lots of photographs, we then had to quickly go back down the mountain to feed our never ending hungry parking meter, unfortunately like most of Italy car parking is not included in your daily needs, most hotels don’t even have it. I suppose when most of the town planning occurred a few thousand years ago they weren’t to know we would need parking for more than a donkey or an ox!

While Leon got his daily exercise in and ran back to the parked car, Charlie and I found some cool paddle boats and thought this would be an entertaining way to see some of the Lake while the other boats weren’t working. Leon wasn’t as keen as us after power walking a good distance to the car and back and knowing he would probably be called upon to do most of the paddling once Charlotte realised how hard it was! But of course his Queen and Princess got there way and after paying our $15:00 euro’s for half an hour we paddled out into the Lake for our half hour of pure torture!! I’m sure this wasn’t as hard when we were kids? Leon sat in the back at first, taking in the sun’s rays without his shirt on until the slow pace and uncontrollable steering by Charlotte got the better of him. Leon and I changed positions without capsizing the boat and after a very short time kicked Charlotte out of the front into the back, and then we paddled with as much steam as we could muster back to shore. After our efforts we were in need of refreshments and due to the high prices of the rich and famous who live in this part of the world, we succumbed to a McDonalds and still hurt a bit when our burgers cost us the same in euro as it does back home in aussie dollars!

Our next mission for the day was a quick trip across the border into Switzerland to have our passports stamped so we didn’t have to pay the tax on Leon’s pinky ring( you must leave the country within 2 months so as to not pay the tax on gold in Italy). We drove for about ten minutes from Como when we came across the Swiss border, but alas, we weren’t stopped by the custom officers yet again. Leon wasn’t sure what to do, so he parked the car and then walked back to the border to enquire how to get his passport stamped. The custom officers weren’t impressed by the way Leon was going about not paying the tax. They informed him that you had to leave the country and return to your own country to not have to pay the tax, not just come across the border and then drive back into Italy!!! But with Leon’s persistence and charm, he finally got them to stamp his passport out of sheer frustration I think, to get rid of the annoying Aussie, he he! Mission accomplished, we then drove around to other villages surrounding the lake to find some less expensive accommodation for our next night in Lake Como.

We settled into a lovely little hotel called Villa Linda in Cadenabbia, then set out for the ferry to explore the villages of Bellagio and Varenna. We meet some Aussies in Bellagio who ran a water taxi service( apparently they had just been featured on Getaway) that took you to the famous locations of movies that had been set on Lake Como and some famous Villa’s, only there $150:00 euro price for a two hour cruise stopped our enthusiasm. In the pretty village of Varenna we enjoyed an aperitif and Charlotte her daily gelato and gazed out over the lake in a dreamy state when all of a sudden we realized the ferry we were watching coming into to dock, was the last ferry back to Bellagio for the day and then we had an extremely fast hike back along the rock wall to the ferry about to raise its boom deck. By chance there were a few other people in the same predicament and the ferry men had seen us and called out that they would wait.

Once back at Villa Linda we decide to eat at the hotel’s restaurant, outside on the veranda overlooking the evening lights sparkling on the shore of the lake. We had one of our most enjoyable evenings, the food was magnificent, waiters friendly(and could speak English, yay)we also meet the owner who had enjoyed living in Australia for six months while he helped coach our Winter Olympic free style jumpers. We marked this hotel and restaurant on our GPS to definitely return when our visitors arrived.