Hotel Parco Paradiso Lugano

... from the point there though which was cool.
Ferry back from Belaggio to Como was a lot quicker (and more expensive) and had some great views of the various places around the lake.

Back in Milan that night discovered the happy hour buffets that I'd read about - 6 Euro for a drink and all you can eat.

Buffet is nothing special, but ...

... 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!

... is that? I'm naming my next dog that, no offense to him, he's a great guy, but I think as an American I could get away with naming a dog that, but not a child) had to work, so they dropped Meghan and I off at a little town called Orta on their way to work. Orta is on Orta Lake, a tiny lake in comparison to the others (Luisa didn't even know it existed), and is also freakin adorable. We got there early-ish, and as we were walking to the center I decided I needed to ...

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 ...

... The balcony where Romeo and Juliet declare their love is a magnet to tourists and they allow people to write and pin love notes to the wall which are cleared every three months so the process can start again.

The relevance of Como for me ended up being from my childhood when Dad subscribed to a weekly series called the History of World War 2. I couldn't wait for each series to arrive and I remember one story of how ...

... Italian. Eventually I did return to reality, but not until after we visited Swiss Miniatur and San Salvatore. Swiss Miniatur is more or less self-explanatory, but I will say it was really cool to visit as a Swiss resident. It gave me and my friend some great ideas for future trips in the country. There are so many castles we never even knew existed! They really captured the great sites and monuments of Switzerland, including mountain ...

... to the irish pub for some live music on st. patricks day. relaxed, a franklin girl cut my hair, went for a walk, mailed some stuff... got a better camera in the mail for my birthday to replace the one i lost. april 9th - 15th -came in from paris and met ramie at annameikas. walked around lugano, went to a "german bbq" with a bunch of franklin kids. made dinner for about 10 people.

... had mentioned to us. We went inside and found that it was five floors of clothing, housewares, and even a food market. A helpful salesperson in the market directed us up to housewares, where we found a great corkscrew for 4.95 euros. We went back down to the market level to pay, and also get regular Coke (which I'd been craving all day). We explored town some more, going down by the water and through parts of ...

... 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 ...