Wedding Blog

Previously: Paris

Early in the morning of Monday, June 8, our train arrived in Milan. From there, we caught another train to Como. In Como, we had to take a bus to Bellagio. I wasn’t sure where to buy bus tickets, so I tried the train ticket line. The woman at the window didn’t speak English, but, luckily, a woman next to me offered to translate, so that I wouldn’t have to dig out my phrase book. I learned that bus tickets are bought in tobacco shops. Of course.

Bus tickets in hand, we wait. About 45 minutes to an hour later, our bus finally arrives. We then endure an hour long bus ride on the narrowest streets that could ever exist. The bus had to honk around every curve to warn oncoming traffic that a giant bus would demolish them if they tried to continue driving. There were times when I had no idea how we didn’t scrape against another vehicle.

We finally arrived in the town of Bellagio. It is a cute little town with lots of cobblestone stairways and few real roads. It is located right on the lake, at the intersection of the three branches. (And for those of you who didn’t know, the wedding scene in Star Wars, Episode II was filmed somewhere on the lake [not Bellagio].)

I took this photo of the town across the lake from Bellagio, so I would imagine it looks similar:

Our hotel, the Hotel Bellagio, was located about halfway up one of the staircases. Dragging our suitcases, we finally arrived and were able to check in. Again, our room was located on the second floor. But at least the elevator was in working condition.

After dropping off our luggage, we went out to explore and find something to eat. I don’t remember if I mentioned this in my post about Paris, but in Europe (at least, in France and Italy), menus are displayed outside of restaurants, so you can “menu-shop” and decide where to eat. We walked around and looked at pretty much every menu in town, making notes about places we wanted to come back to. We finally settled on the first restaurant we had looked at. I ordered the lasagna and a glass of their house red wine. I’m not sure what the wine was, but it was really good.

The day was chilly and overcast and it started to drizzle at some point, so we headed back to the hotel. We ventured out later that night for our first taste of gelato! And it was gooooood! So good that, in spite of taking photos of virtually everything I ate on the trip, I failed to get any decent shots of my gelato. I ate it that fast. This is the only gelato photo I took the entire trip.

The next day was also rainy. My mom fell on the stairs outside our hotel first thing, so we spent a good deal of our morning trying to track down the pharmacy. Which, when we finally found it, was closed until the afternoon. We took this opportunity to go to the local Internet cafe, so I could update Facebook and check my email. I had free wi-fi access in the hotel in Paris, but, in Italy, it was a different story.

Then we hit up a pizza joint for lunch, and I began my Italian tradition of pizza and Chianti. I had just the pizza margherita (cheese pizza, basically) and a half bottle of wine. It was quite tasty.

We walked around some more and did some shopping. We would have liked to take a boat tour of the river, but it kept raining, so we never got the chance.

The boat we never got to ride on:

The next morning we caught the bus back to Como and began our trek to Venice. (To be continued…)

Bellagio was nice, but I think I would have enjoyed it more for a romantic getaway. And if the weather had cooperated. I did really enjoy the hotel we stayed at, however, and highly recommend it if you’re traveling to Lake Como.