Hotel Flora Chiavenna

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 ...

Hi Everyone,
Today Alan and I took the ferry to Lenno, another beautiful town on Lake Come. This town is known for the Villa Balbianello. The gardens were amazing and we dedided to take the tour of the Villa, which is usually not such a big deal. We were surprised to find that the past owner of this villa, Guido Monzino, had ...

Hi Everyone:

We just returned from an amazing day with Luca and Mary, our friends who live in Figline Valdarno (20 mins south of Florence), who drove for 7 hrs (actually they were stuck in lots of traffic along the way) to visit us in Varenna. We had lunch lakeside, and then took a ferry to Bellagio, strolled around the Gardens of Villa Serbolini, ferried back to Varenna for dinner at Vecchia Varenna. They just left for what Luca aticipates ...

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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!

... Vecchia Varenna. Sunday we will be staying here anotherday. Instead of staying near the airport, we have, as previously mentioned, turned in the car and will take a taxi to Malpensa Monday morning very early. That gives us a whole day here. They cannot give us our same room, but they have instead assigned us a lovely room with similar views. Sunday we will probably ferry the lake again.

See you all soon.

Love

Alan

... in one of our favorite places. Since we will be taking ferrys from now on, we decided to turn in the car. Our room overlooks the lake and the town. It is very peacfull and beautiful with amazing gardens. We just had a great dinner and we are both looking foward to spending the rest of our vacations on this lake. Thats all for now, Love, Laura

... churches, castles, bridges, and historic buildings.

San Salvatore is one of the mountains on Lake Lugano. You can ride to the top in a funnicular, or hike up the steep path. We went the lazy route and saved our energy for walking around on top. From the funnicular station you can walk up a bit further to a small chapel sitting on the peak of the mountain. The chapel has a rooftop terrace with a stunning 360 degree panorama view.
Lugano, Swiss Alps, Switzerland travelingdiva

... we climbed up the many steps for the panoramic view of the town and the Alps. Other interesting buildings were built in the 16th Century and included charming piazzas, a religious college/church, and stone entrance gates. With yesterday's cycle race finishing here many of the houses and shops were still decorated for the event with the pink theme (balloons, pink bikes and flowers). Wanting to make use of our little kitchen ...

... the unsightly industrial core of northern Italy around Milan. Continuing on to Modena we got off the motorway and headed for the small town of Maranello and, with the afternoon fast disappearing, we looked straight away for a place to stay for the night. We found a centrally located and quite modern hotel, and the man at the reception desk proudly announced he had one last factory-view room. Now this wouldn’t usually be a selling point for most hotels, even in places ...

... and experienced today. I know I said the same thing about Austria, and it is still true, but this was a whole different level of experience.

After we returned to Davos, we took a short walk and then we had dinner at a very nice little bistro about a block from the hotel. What a nice, quiet way to cap off a wonderful day. It will be an early night tonight. The bags have to be in the hallway by 6:30 am, with breakfast at 6:45 am. We will transfer to Germany (via Austria) tomorrow.