Lake Como Varenna

We are now in Italy in a small town, Varenna, on Lake Como. Norm booked our stay here instead of the shopping town of Bellagio and George Clooney... but it is peaceful and beautiful. The pictures tell it all.

Boat ride to Varenna... a 20 minute ride from Menaggio.

View of Varenna, a town of 800 people. We are staying in a Hotel right on the Lake.

I am going to have to start working out again. Norm carried up both suitcases to the top of the stairs... Hotel Milano.

This is the view from our hotel... would you believe? Is this not Nirvana? We dipped our toes into Lake Como after having lunch under those white umbrellas yesterday.




View from our street. I'm getting my exercise walking up and down the stairs!

Lugano

Our second day in Lugano, Switzerland... we finally got a full nights sleep, so all those days of staying up all night in Oakland finally paid off. This morning we took a beautiful walk along Lake Lugano for about 1.5 hours to a beautiful mountainside fishing village where we ate lunch while waiting for the boat to take us back to Lugano. You can see from the photo that we ate tomato and fresh mozzarella salad and polenta with porcini mushrooms.

Heres a view from the restaurant where we ate and a view of the narrow steet in the village of Gandria.

July 25

We're leaving today. It's 11:49 PM and Daniel is coming over at 5 AM to take us to BART. Our flight leaves at 8:40 AM. I never did adjust to the time change and rather than fighting it, I just went with my body's rhythms. This schedule was aided by the addicting Korean Drama "All In" which Daniel lent me. It takes place on Jeju Island and packed full of drama and action. Next entry will be from Italy... hopefully accompanied by a photo.

Preparing to leave

July 15, 2007

There's lots to do before we leave. Norm is leaving for backpacking tomorrow for 6 nights. I just returned from Beijing, Jejudo, and Seoul and am still suffering from jet lag. We went to see Ratatouille today with Chris, Joni, Jaylyn and Jayce and I fell asleep on their couch after a home-made delicious Mexican meal while Norm and Daniel took Jaylyn and Jayce to the park.

Tomorrow, I should feel better and can start thinking about packing again. In the meantime, enjoy the photo of Brenda, Jai and me at Ilchubang Mountain on Jeju Island.