The Italian town of Como and Lake Como are only a few hours drive from Genoa on the coast of Italy. And, it was a fun drive!
We went around Milano and into the mountains. Hubby D was getting used to the car and I was enjoying seeing the countryside go by.
We passed several highway rest stops with gas stations. The restaurant areas were very big, but I never saw more than 4 pumps in any one gas station. No massive lines of gas pumps like we experienced in Texas.
There were also many unusual architectural structures along the way as well as very long tunnels.
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| Even the power lines were interesting. |
And, we started seeing bell towers. It was very odd. When we were on the train, we would pass small towns and look at them. We never really had the time to look at them intently.
Now we had time to pick out buildings and look at the differences in the structures. As we saw in Spain, the small towns still had high-rise apartment buildings. Even the smallest town had multiple churches. And, each church had a bell tower.
One particular bell tower really reminded Hubby D of a World War II movie. He said, “Get a sniper up in that bell tower.” And, he was right. It looked just like in the war movies. Maybe like the movie
Saving Private Ryan.
From then on every time we saw a bell tower, one of us would say, “There’s a good place for a sniper.” Guess we have seen too many war movies.
Pretty soon we started seeing tall mountains with snow. It was great.
The resort town of Como on the edge of Lake Como is pretty much shut down in the fall and winter. Most of the restaurants and hotels are closed. This actually turned out to be fantastic. There were no crowds and all the people were very, very friendly as well as relaxed. It was just perfect.
Our hotel, one of the few open was right on the lake and was very quaint. We also had a great view from our room.
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| The keys to the room were large metal keys and you gave it back to the desk clerk every time you went out. Very quaint. |
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| This is the view from one of the three windows in our room. There was a really wonderful view from all of them. |
Our first adventure was to take a ferry ride around the lake. It was cold, but really beautiful.
We had some extra time so we decided because we were so close we would drive to the Swiss border.
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| Here is the "drive through" Swiss border. |
We have a good friend who lived in Switzerland and she had told us many times how wonderful it is. This was really not a good taste of the country, but it was fun to do.
After we arrived back to the hotel, we left on foot in search of wine and cheese to make snacks so we could watch the town come to life after sunset from the windows in our room.
Our next search was for a good local restaurant for dinner. We discovered one that was just right.
A husband and wife team along with one helper ran the restaurant. They were amazing and the food was terrific.
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| Our appetizer was this wonderful bread stuffed with cheese. |
The next morning we packed up the car and headed to Spello, Italy.
We were really looking forward to being in one place for more than a day or two. AND, our friends had told us so much about Spello that we were really looking forward to being there.
Ciao,
Brenda
