August 15th is a Catholic holiday in Spain. Not being religious, this mostly meant J and I had a wednesday off. This is what is known as a looong bridge, or puente in Spanish. Normally, puentes are vacations on Tuesday or Thursday, then you take vacation on the Monday or Friday, but hey, when you have 27 days of vacation a year, why not take both Mon and Tues off, then you have 5 days off!
I used the typical strategy of perusing the airline sites to find the cheapest flight for a place that was also on our list. We ended up with Milan. J and I built the list based mostly on cities we have heard of, and Milan is a relatively well known city. When we started telling people that we were going to Milan, we got a surprisingly unanimous response:
"Why do you want to go to Milan? Do you want to go shopping? Milan is all fashion, and industrial, maybe it is worth a day, but why would you want to spend more time there?"
So, after realizing how much we enjoyed the rural areas of Bourdeaux and Cork, we started to look at what "rural" activities were within a stone's throw of Milan. What came up was Lake Como, which is very close to the border with Switzerland.
So away we went. Como is about an hour outside of Milano by train. From there, there are ferries ad buses to the cities surrounding the lakes. Using the same AirBnB strategy as Dublin, we ended up in a small town called Lezzeno. In everyday life, J is... more...of a planner than I am. I am much more content to have gaps in my schedule with nothing to do, and just winging a weekend, while J always needs something to do. When we travel, it's like we go into bizarro world. I get just slightly anxious about making our flights and making it to the hotel on time. I also get just slightly sarcastic when I blog too, which is tough to do online. Anywho, when you add in the fact that it was Sunday, so the normal Tourist Info people and the bus stop ticket sales were closed, I get even mroe nervous. This leads me to stupidly mumble "Lezzano? Lezzano?" while trying to thrust money at the bus driver, followed by me repeatedly trying to leave the bus thinking it was my stop. This led to J eventually giving me strict orders to not move until the bus driver stopped the bus, looked at us, and mumbled something in Italian to the effect of "Ok you moron, you've tried to leave 27 times so far, and THIS is the time you dont get up.... get off my bus!"
Lezzeno is a town of 500 people tops. Our B and B was up the hill from the coastline, and not even fully accessible by car, you have to walk to last 10 minutes on foot to the farmhouse. In the 1950's, still devastated after WWII, property prices plummeted. As a way to try to restore the economy, developers took the opportunity to buy land at super low prices, and convert the farmhouses into "Agriturismo". The house had goats and sheep! There were 2 rooms for touristas like J and me, then the whole family also lived in the house. As long as they had a reservation, there was also a restaurant available. As soon as we arrived, it was easy to see why people speak highly of this area. Here is the view from our room
My favorite part of Lake Como is that there are forest covered hills that lead all the way up to a serene lake. On day 2 we decided to take a hike from our hotel to Bellagio. We only missed the trail once, and we figured it out within 25 minutes or so. We ended up getting directions from a very friendly couple whose daughter is actually living in San Diego right now. Small world... It was quite a nice day wandering through the forest, topped off with pizza and gelato, before taking a ferry back to Lezzeno. We spent the rest of the night enjoying the beautiful view, including a wild deer that wandered into the property, and trying to avoid the bees that decided our balcony was a good place to hang out. AND! The best part:.. they had goats, and made their own goat cheese, and they had bees to make their own honey! Of course J and I went down to play with the goats and the sheep. The goats were waayyy nicer than I expected them to be, and the sheep were not nearly as soft as J thought they would be, plus, big scaredy cats, those sheep. J and I were bigger fans of the goats.
Of course, I wanted to get out onto the water... So, I managed to find a place that rented kayaks, and spent several hours just kayaking up an down the coast. It was very pretty, though somehow, without any waves or any specific challenge (like in La Jolla), you can only be out there for so long before getting a little bored. I mean, seriously, how long can you enjoy great weather and beautiful views?!?! When I had enough time on the water, I enjoyed an Italian Nastro Azurri while watching the boats go by.
Overall, I thought the lake was incredible. I loved how tranquil and pure everything is there. With that being said, there were all of 4 restaurants in the whole town, and I have no idea what most people did for work. I would love to say that I could live there, but I think I need just a little bit more city and liveliness. I do however, love visiting here.
I used the typical strategy of perusing the airline sites to find the cheapest flight for a place that was also on our list. We ended up with Milan. J and I built the list based mostly on cities we have heard of, and Milan is a relatively well known city. When we started telling people that we were going to Milan, we got a surprisingly unanimous response:
"Why do you want to go to Milan? Do you want to go shopping? Milan is all fashion, and industrial, maybe it is worth a day, but why would you want to spend more time there?"
So, after realizing how much we enjoyed the rural areas of Bourdeaux and Cork, we started to look at what "rural" activities were within a stone's throw of Milan. What came up was Lake Como, which is very close to the border with Switzerland.
So away we went. Como is about an hour outside of Milano by train. From there, there are ferries ad buses to the cities surrounding the lakes. Using the same AirBnB strategy as Dublin, we ended up in a small town called Lezzeno. In everyday life, J is... more...of a planner than I am. I am much more content to have gaps in my schedule with nothing to do, and just winging a weekend, while J always needs something to do. When we travel, it's like we go into bizarro world. I get just slightly anxious about making our flights and making it to the hotel on time. I also get just slightly sarcastic when I blog too, which is tough to do online. Anywho, when you add in the fact that it was Sunday, so the normal Tourist Info people and the bus stop ticket sales were closed, I get even mroe nervous. This leads me to stupidly mumble "Lezzano? Lezzano?" while trying to thrust money at the bus driver, followed by me repeatedly trying to leave the bus thinking it was my stop. This led to J eventually giving me strict orders to not move until the bus driver stopped the bus, looked at us, and mumbled something in Italian to the effect of "Ok you moron, you've tried to leave 27 times so far, and THIS is the time you dont get up.... get off my bus!"
Lezzeno is a town of 500 people tops. Our B and B was up the hill from the coastline, and not even fully accessible by car, you have to walk to last 10 minutes on foot to the farmhouse. In the 1950's, still devastated after WWII, property prices plummeted. As a way to try to restore the economy, developers took the opportunity to buy land at super low prices, and convert the farmhouses into "Agriturismo". The house had goats and sheep! There were 2 rooms for touristas like J and me, then the whole family also lived in the house. As long as they had a reservation, there was also a restaurant available. As soon as we arrived, it was easy to see why people speak highly of this area. Here is the view from our room
My favorite part of Lake Como is that there are forest covered hills that lead all the way up to a serene lake. On day 2 we decided to take a hike from our hotel to Bellagio. We only missed the trail once, and we figured it out within 25 minutes or so. We ended up getting directions from a very friendly couple whose daughter is actually living in San Diego right now. Small world... It was quite a nice day wandering through the forest, topped off with pizza and gelato, before taking a ferry back to Lezzeno. We spent the rest of the night enjoying the beautiful view, including a wild deer that wandered into the property, and trying to avoid the bees that decided our balcony was a good place to hang out. AND! The best part:.. they had goats, and made their own goat cheese, and they had bees to make their own honey! Of course J and I went down to play with the goats and the sheep. The goats were waayyy nicer than I expected them to be, and the sheep were not nearly as soft as J thought they would be, plus, big scaredy cats, those sheep. J and I were bigger fans of the goats.
Of course, I wanted to get out onto the water... So, I managed to find a place that rented kayaks, and spent several hours just kayaking up an down the coast. It was very pretty, though somehow, without any waves or any specific challenge (like in La Jolla), you can only be out there for so long before getting a little bored. I mean, seriously, how long can you enjoy great weather and beautiful views?!?! When I had enough time on the water, I enjoyed an Italian Nastro Azurri while watching the boats go by.
Overall, I thought the lake was incredible. I loved how tranquil and pure everything is there. With that being said, there were all of 4 restaurants in the whole town, and I have no idea what most people did for work. I would love to say that I could live there, but I think I need just a little bit more city and liveliness. I do however, love visiting here.