Day 10 – Lake Como, Villa d’Este, Brunate and Milan

We woke to a perfect day. It was probably about 60 and sunny. And the day only got prettier! Here's the view from the hotel room.

And a few of the trip back to the town of Como.

We took the hydrofoil (fast boat) back to Como and met a chatty little new friend.

The view was so beautiful...if you look closely, you can see the snow capped mountains in the backgroud...

And here it is zoomed in a little! Just perfectly gorgeous!

In Como we had some fresh gelato at the dock and bought our tickets for the slow boat over to a place called Villa d’Este. It used to be a private residence and is now one of the fanciest hotels in the world. Oh, and PS, was the rumored location that George Clooney was going to propose to his girlfriend earlier this month! We rolled up on foot and were asked if we were clients…uh, no. Alison answered, "We’re having lunch here." And we got in! We walked over to the lake side bar, surrounded by the definition of characters. These people were even caricatures of themselves…oh to be rich! We ordered champagne and relaxed. It was perfect out and I turtled in one of the prettiest places in the world. Until we got the bill of a whopping 63 euro for the 3 glasses!!! Ouch. But, it was well worth it! And we got delicious, fresh olives as big as ping pong balls, nuts and cheese crackers ‘free’. We walked the gardens and grounds, smelled the fragrant wisteria and checked out the floating pool and of course had to visit the ladies room! Isn’t that always the best part of fancy hotels? These did not disappoint! They even had a bidet, which we had a lengthy debate about its use in a public restroom!

We took the slow boat back to Como and headed straight over to the funicular that climbs up to a small town called Brunate. This was the tallest one I had been on and from my google-ing looks like it was a 55% grade and somewhere around 2000 feet tall. The town of Brunate appeared to be tiny, but was very pretty with meandering streets and views of the lake and town of Como. We had paninis for lunch at a tiny café and soaked in the sun.

This lazy little guy was soaking in the sun and didn't budge when we walked up!

From there, we began the trek down the hill and across the town of Como.

After a quick stop at a local park (with 5 years olds driving go karts...yet another thing to never fly in the US), we caught the 6:00 train to head to Milan for dinner and to get a quick look at the city. This is where the fun began! We hopped off the train and headed for the lockers. Milan’s station is a mess and isn’t tourist friendly at all! There was a huge line for the baggage storage room and it was manned by people instead of a nice do it yourself locker room and it was a per bag charge! Yuck! So, we decided to check on jetting to the hotel then coming back into Milan. That’s when we found out there is only a shuttle bus (no metro) and it was an hour drive. That was out…so we headed back to the lockers and checked our things. When we went to purchase our bus tickets, the last one left at 9:10 (and it was already 8!)…but we had paid to check our bags, so we walked outside and circled the train station…got about 10 pics to prove we were there and headed straight back into the baggage check line. We got our bags out of hawk and went down to the waiting area. Our shuttle took off without a hitch and we took the very long, but relaxing ride to the Milan airport. Here we are giving sad faces at not seeing a little more of Milano!

When we pulled up to the airport, we all thought to ourselves, man, this place is tiny, but maybe it’s huge inside. It did say domestic and international departures on the sign. We cheerfully went to a cabbie and asked him to take us to the Airport Ramada. The look on his face was blank. “Are you sure”, he asked, “that hotel is 22 KM away”? What!?!?! The sheet said it was 2 KM away…doesn’t that make more sense for an airport hotel? So, he very kindly called the hotel while we were trying to look up our confirmation info. They sent over a shuttle and we were to wait by the farmacia for about half an hour. The bus showed up as planned (phew), but we had a stop on the way. It was the exit off to terminal 1. We all cracked up when we saw the humongous airport in the distance. Now, this was what we were expecting…I guess we had gotten off on the wrong stop from the shuttle!! So, we picked up one more passenger and made the 10 minute drive into the country to the “Airport” Ramada. It was actually very nice and we had some dinner then hit the hay.