Our first full day in Italy dawned bright and beautiful with a lovely calmness out over the lake. We both took some pictures from out on our balcony, but it's really hard to encapsulate it all when the smell of the roses and the abundance of pleasant birdsong is missing. The pictures are still pretty to look at, though.
We eventually made it down to the restaurant for breakfast, which was a decent buffet including all the possible favourites from any and all nationalities that were visiting the hotel. I write that, but then think there was a lack of pancakes and maple syrup for the Canadians. With our bellies full we set off towards the centre of town, which in our case is around the corner and down a hill. We didn't really have a plan, other than we needed to stop somewhere to buy sunscreen. The giant ball of hydrogen-helium in the sky was intent on turning us a nice shade of crimson and we had to put up an adequate defence.
Bellagio town centre is a nice warren of intertwining roads, all twisting and intersecting around a main passageway. This would look, upon first glance, to be a pedestrian only thoroughfare, but cars and trucks seemed intent on making their way through the masses, making it necessary to duck into shops and stalls to avoid getting your toes run over. Luckily a lot of the shops were quirky and quaint, and not the ridiculous tourist traps that you would expect in places this heavily trafficked by outsiders. We did make a few purchases including an intriguing bowl made of plexiglass with wheat, flowers and grasses in between the layers. We did find our sunscreen, which was good because the sun was getting hot.
After traversing the town we decided to head for the Punta Spartivento, the very tip of the peninsula on which Bellagio is located. The name is indicative of what the point does, which is split the wind which comes from the north, sending some of it down George Clooney's way on the Como arm of the lake and the rest to the lucky inhabitants of Lecco on the other arm. We got some good shots and pushed on back towards town to try and round up some lunch.
We found a nice restaurant right on the waterfront by the ferry terminal. That sounds a little industrial until you take into account the fact that the Lake Como ferries are more like super-sized pleasure boats. We had a nice fresh lunch. We shared our first, likely of very many, plate of prosciutto e melone, with some deliciously ripe melon and melt-in-your-mouth prosciutto. Fiona then had her first spaghetti a la bolognese of the trip, a far cry from the decrepit "spag-bol"s they prepare in Scotland. I had a nice tagliatelli with lake whitefish, which was quite tasty but odd in that the whitefish was ground and cooked to look almost like ground turkey. We washed it all down with a bottle of the local Lombardy white. We're doing quite well with the local wines - two for two as it stands. This was nice and crisp and refreshing, although a little too reminiscent of when we were younger and just married, drinking wines that tasted more like apple juice than anything grown-ups would choose.
After lunch we looked a list of about a half dozen local villas that we could tour and decided instead to march back to our hotel and spend a quality afternoon at the hotel pool. The weather, as I've said already, was glorious and we soaked it up like the poor sun-deprived people that we were. There is something about repeated dips in a crystal clear pool, followed by mojitos and sunshine that is just really good for the soul. Someone should write a medical paper on that.
Dinner was at the hotel again, and for people who normally shun a fixed menu like it was poison, we chose it again. Fiona had fresh pasta with a bacon, onion and tomato sauce, followed by a lovely piece of veal. I had pasta with scampi followed by the veal as well. A shared bowl of mixed gelatos went down extremely well at the end.
We spent the last few waking hours of the day marvelling at some pictures we took. The ones that we really enjoyed were a few we took just before dinner. About an hour before it started to rain. There was a little thunder and lightning, but nothing more than a steady rain that worked its way from the northern to the southern end of the lake. We thought it would help us get some better pictures by clearing the humidity based haze that hangs over the area. While it eventually did that, it also did something even more spectacular. Right outside our balcony, over the small marina in the bay, it hung a full, end-to-end rainbow. It was so amazing. I don't think I've ever seen both ends of a rainbow so clearly before. On one end, by some houses we've been admiring, it doubled up and gave two clear bands of colour. We stood and stared out at the spectacle for a good half an hour before it started to fade. Fiona got some photos that I think do it justice, although they have the added feature of making it look like there was an entirely different weather pattern inside the rainbow. It's these types of things I'll remember way more than any list of villas or museums or monuments. It's these types of things that really make great vacation memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment