Residence Principe Leopoldo 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 ...

When I finally found Lake Como (after a train, then a bus, then a ferry and then a very confusing walk) I was surprised that it was so empty. It was raining (I think the rain is following me around Europe) and there was no one about so I was able to do my exploring easily. Lake Como is a very small place with not too many things to ...

... kind of deep fried meat and french fries. Awesomely American. The boys went off after lunch so the girls and Meghan and I played cards. I had grapes that had to be for wine, they had such a deep taste and stained my fingers purple and the grandma brought us cookies and dark chocolate. We went back home and Meghan and I took their dog, an incrediby fat yellow lab, for a walk. It was another gorgeous fall day, we walked through vineyards, a forest with vegetation ...

... quaint with beautiful villas. We walked the gardens of the Melza Villa. The canons in the photos are not toys....they are from the Napoleonic period...used to defeat Milan. The keys are to the city of Milan from the 1700's.

The food here is terrific. We travel back to Milan tomorrow to pick up our friends and head to the villa in Montanione. Forecast is for thunderstorms...yeah!

Love,
R ich and Kara

... the world as an explorer and mountain climber. Through his travels he had collected art from Africa, Asia, South America and other parts of Europe. The Villa was a museum dedicated to his travels and collections. Very interesting!
Tonight is our last in Lake Como. We had originally planned to stay the last night in ...

... down in a square. The tour guide told the story of this event which was in fact played out around Como with the bodies being hung upside down in the nearby city of Milan.

As with everything these days I was able to retrieve the picture from the internet and have included it to reinforce the adage that violence begets violence - and on a smaller scale even the young love in Romeo and Juliet is destroyed by family conflict ...

... 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 ...

... n e*sily see why! They h*ve "their" b*r they go to *nd seem to know * lot of people from *ll w*lks of life... loc*l celebrity comes to mind *s * w*y of describing their lives in Switzerl*nd! Lug*no is * qu*int town of m*ybe 100,000 high in the Alps with spect*cul*r views *cross L*ke Lug*no *nd the surrounding mount*ins. We go for * scenic ...

... corkscrew. On a whim, we decided to look for the Peter Pan bar that the Virginia Tech student had mentioned in the morning. As we neared the hotel, we saw large groups of dressed-up girls walking through the neighborhood, so we figured we were close by. We found the bar quickly--it was a very Americanized bar, but not in the Europop way. It had cheap beer (the only pitchers in Europe, the students said), a ...

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)
< br>With Italy to the south, we instead continued east along the Oberalppass. It was fun to drive, though not as memorable as the Sustenpass, and on getting to the bottom at the limits of the small town of Disentis/Mustér I was requested to pull over at a police caravan set up at the roadside. I had not remembered the speed limit outside towns for all roads, other than motorways, in Switzerland was always 80km/h ...