Hi, everyone!
It took a little longer than Grandpa expected, but the new fire door between the house and garage is in place! I helped Grandpa put the metal casing on the garage side.
I was looking forward to helping Grandma finish the wallboard, but she said we were going on another adventure first! We took a plane ride to New York City, then we got on a great big plane going to Milan, Italy! Grandpa told me the plane was an Airbus 380. I really liked watching the images from the tail camera and the GPS map of where we were going! When the sun came up over Europe, I could see the Alps from the airplane window!
We arrived in Milan on Saturday, so some of the downtown streets were closed to cars and there were lots of people out! Grandma and Grandpa took me for a walk near our hotel. First we walked past the duomo (cathedral) and the plaza in front of it. Staff were setting up for an outside concert in front of the Teatro La Scala! Of course, I needed to say hello to my lion cousin in the plaza!
Then we walked down the Via Garabaldi to the Duke’s palace. There were entertainers and street vendors all along the way! Somebody was blowing really big bubbles! We stopped at the fountain and walked through the Duke’s courtyard, but we didn’t go all the way to the Peace gate in the park on the far side. The weather was sunny and warm, so we had gelati on our way back!
The next morning, we joined our tour group in the lobby of our Milan hotel. I made friends with our guide, Giampiero-san, right away! We got on the tour bus for the trip to Bellagio, on Lake Como. On our way out of town, I saw LaScala opera theater, which is very famous!
Grandpa says the Italian Lake District has a lot in common with the Finger Lakes in New York. They were both carved by glaciers, but the Italian lakes were carved out of the Alps, so the mountains are bigger and the valleys steeper than in New York. Bellagio is on the peninsula where the glacier split to go on either side of particularly hard rock. The resulting lake, Lake Como, has the shape of an upside down Keuka Lake or letter Y. It is very pretty, and a lot of our adventures here involve walking to spots that give us a pretty view of the lake! We had our first nice view when we looked out the window of our room at the Hotel Belvedere! We can see the Lecco arm of the lake and Pescallo fishing village. Lago di Lecco is the eastern arm of the upside down Y.
Right after lunch, we took our first walk! We met our local guide to visit the grounds of Villa Serbelloni. Villa Serbelloni was built in the 1500s, restored as a hilltop hotel, then bought for use as a private home, then donated to the Rockefeller Foundation for use as a conference center and retreat for scholars. Because it is on the highest hill in Bellagio, there are views of all three arms of Lake Como from various spots on the trails. There are also interesting statues and outbuildings, gardens planted in the 1800s and lots and lots of climbing on the way to the top! First we saw the Como arm of Lake Como (the western arm of the Y), then the north-south “stem” of the Y, then the Lecco arm again. I made friends with a statue of Pliny the Younger, who described the location where he built a villa that must have been on the Villa Serbelloni property. Pliny died in 113 AD, so it’s not too surprising nobody can find any trace of his villa now! There are the remains of a fort at the very top of the property, but I can’t remember who built it!
It’s very warm and sunny in Italy right now, so I was tired after we walked back from Villa Serbelloni. I relaxed on the sundeck of the hotel and visited the kitchen gardens. They’re growing basil and rosemary, just like I helped Grandma plant!
On Monday, I woke up early to see sunrise, but it was cloudy. After breakfast, we took a walk around the lower sections of Bellagio with Rita-san and Giampiero-san. Rita-san’s family lives in the house right at the tip of Bellagio peninsula, so we got to look at Lake Como and some very pretty hydrangeas from there. She also told us that the yellow and white decorations we were seeing all over town were to celebrate a local man being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. He is the first local resident to become a priest in fifty years, so everybody was very excited and happy.
Then we walked in the other direction to Villa Melzi, where there is another nice set of gardens. There is a promenade leading to Villa Melzi right along the shore of the Como arm of the lake. We were too late in the season to see the azaleas and rhododendrons in bloom, but I made lots of plant friends that I recognized from Grandma and Grandpa’s house or other travels. Rita-san said that plants from all over the world were brought to grow here! Guess what? There was another lion statue cousin to get to know, too!
Villa Melzi is right at lake level, but Giampiero-san wanted us to have lunch with his friend who lives higher up the hillside. On our way, we visited another small church and saw the bells they have just replaced. Even the bells were decorated for the priest’s ordination! Giampiero-san’s friend’s terrace was another place to see a lovely view of the Como arm of Lake Como. I was glad to have a chance to rest before the hot uphill walk back to the hotel!
When I got back to the hotel, I needed to cool off! Grandpa and I went to the swimming pool, then I took a nap! Monday was Grandpa’s birthday, and the hotel left him a card and flowers in our room. At dinnertime, everybody in the tour group celebrated and Grandpa had an ice cream birthday cake with candles to blow out. He didn’t get any help from me because it was way after my bedtime!
Today, we took the hydrofoil ferry boat down to the end of the Como arm of the lake, to the town of Como. When the hydrofoil boat is up to speed, the hull is completely out of the water and the boat skims along on the hydrofoils. I’ve seen hydrofoil boats on television programs about America’s Cup yacht racing, but I’ve never been on one before. It was fun to watch the boat rise on the hydrofoils!
In Como, we met our local guide Donatella-san and learned about the history and architecture of the town. Volta, the inventor of the electric battery, was born here. He lived about the same time as Napoleon! The Romans built Como, so the oldest part of the city has wide Roman avenues laid out in a grid inside city walls. When the city grew in the Middle Ages, the new sections surrounding the Roman part had narrower streets. Over the years, buildings in all sorts of architectural styles ended up next to each other! Como has a duomo (cathedral) designed by the same architect that designed the duomo I saw in Milan. It took longer to build the Como duomo, though, so it has a mix of styles from different periods of building! I liked the different kinds of decorations on the old buildings! Did you know that originally graffiti meant decorations intentionally put on a building by scratching through a decorating layer to the surface underneath? In Italian, “graffiti” means “scratched”!
After we walked through the old parts of Como, we went up to the mountaintop of the village of Brunate for another lovely view of Lake Como. I was VERY relieved that we were taking a funicular and not walking! There’s been a cable car up to Brunate since the 1800s, and I made friends with the original drive wheel for the cable. In the late 1800s, many rich people built villas on the shores of Lake Como, with private docks for their boats. When all that space was used up, people started building elaborate villas in Brunate, well above Como, as well. We took a walk with Donatella-san to another lovely view of Lake Como. Even on a hazy day, you can see part of Switzerland that is very close. When it’s clear, you can see even more of the Italian and Swiss Alps! We had another lunch with a view, then we took the funicular back down to Como.
Lake Ontario isn’t the only lake with a lake level problem! Only the Lecco arm of Lake Como drains to a river, so water can back up in the Como arm when there’s heavy snow melt or lots of rain. Since Roman times, the level of the city has been raised several times to deal with the problem, but flooding still happens. The submerged breakwalls and sand bags at the harbor look just like Sodus Point!
Love,
Lion-san
It is too bad you didn’t finish all the work back home, but it will be there when you get back. It sounds like a great trip with the nice lunch vistas. Hope your little legs don’t get too tired walking up the hills. Hope you are enjoying the good gelato and coming up with good ideas for the travel dinner.