Hotel Domus Lugano

... hill to the Volta Lighthouse. If it wasn't for the foggy view we would have had a great panoramic view of Lake Como and it's surrounds.
After walking back down to Como we caught the bus out to Belaggio which is at the furthest point on the lake. Town was completely dead. a couple of cafes and post card shops open and that was it!
Some nice ...

... but it was nice to be able to relax and have a quiet walk around the villages. I needed to take a lot of ferries as this is the quickest way to get between each town as they are all placed at different points around the lake. A very nice place that I would love to visit again in the Summertime.

Next stop is Venice, Italy!

Ciao Bello,

We have finally hit a day of rain...so we thought we should stop off at the nearest internet site to say hello. We have visited a few of our neighboring communities in the last few days. Varenna, which claims to be the diamond of the lake, while Bellagio is only the pearl of the lake. No George Clooney sightings. Varenna is a cute and quiet town with steep hillsides and walkways. Bellagio is also ...

... near the airport. Because we changed the plans the hotel put us in another room... a suite. They were nice enough not to charge us the usuall price for this magnificent space. Although we have to wake up at 5am, we will sleep in this luxurious suite.
Looking foward to being home and seeing our friends and family. Love, Laura

John

From Venice we drove across Italy to Lake Como which is close to the Swiss border. On the way we stopped at the town of Verona which was developed by the Romans and has its own smaller version of the Colosseum which is still used for opera and musical events. However Verona is most famous for being the hometown of Romeo and Juliet whose love is thwarted by a fued between their respective families the Capulets and the ...

... br>
Bellagio holds the characteristics you could only dream of. In fact, I feel almost guilty leaving this entry so short, but we cannot find the enough words worthy of describing this magnificent place....we have to pinch each other to remind ourselves at how lucky we are to be in such a spectacular place together.

Salute!

... The weather was absolutely perfect the entire time we were in Lugano and it wasn't easy to leave behind. Every place I visit in Ticino, the Italian region of Switzerland, I love, so I am sure I will be back to see more of it soon.

On Monday morning my Canadian friend left us in Lugano on a train for Milan. I wish him a safe journey and an amazing experience on his first backpacking trip ever, and his first time outside of North America.

Guy, Erika, and Nelson came to Switzerland for a 9 day visit that took us all over the country. Our first weekend together found us in Lugano Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. We stayed at a lakeside hotel and friend Nick and Francine joined us from London. This region was really marvelous and was strikingly different from everywhere else I ...

... to pay my first ever speeding fine in twelve years of driving with an attitude of taking it on the chin (actually, it turned out to be the second – in the post soon after I got a far less serious fine from the day before. One of the new permanent speed cameras on the autoroute somewhere around Lausanne had snapped me for presumably not having slowed down fast enough in a 100km/h zone in an area where the speed limits change constantly between 120km/h and 100km/h), and I ...

Lugano has always had a special meaning for us. The reason for it was our late friend Ljuben Markov the concertmeister of the local philharmonic orchestra if I remember correct. We have sent, ahead of us, from Athens, an invitation for a dinner with him, his wife Asja and daughter Nellie at the Coque d'Or restaurant. A day or so before we have left there came a black-rimmed ...