Day 21: Blevio and Lake Como

We had breakfast out on Alessandro's porch, overlooking beautiful lake Como. Alessandro's lovely mom Adriana had laid it out for us.

Alessandro was presumably inside-- we could hear the ping ping ping sounds of computerised machine gun fire and point earning from his 'study.' It was just him and his mom living there, and though he had said it was his house, we were beginning to think that he may have been taking advantage of her lack of English skills -- this was looking like more of a mummy's boy scenario than he had let on. When she brought him a lunch tray, we had our clincher.

Breakfast finished (Matt awarded it bonus points for cocoa puffs, but detracted for lack of granola) we headed off on foot to find the stairs to the lake that Alessandro had promised were five minutes away. An hour and four failed attempts later, we decided to just get the bus into Como and wander around. We were also really close to the famous lake front town Belaggio (which the Vegas casino is named after), but wanted to check out Como first. 

We packed sandwiches and walked for hours around the lake, enjoying the hot sun and searching for kayak rentals that were not closed, abandoned, or ludicrously expensive. No joy. What we did find though was a friendly guy renting out hourly kiddie pedal boats. Sold. 

Our lakeworthy craft was likely stapled together in 1958 and left to sit in the sun since then. We could admire the blue water through rust holes in the boats bottom, and quickly learned that the pedals and steering wheel were really more decorative than functional, as we pedaled furiously and drifted randomly on other boats wakes. 

Despite this, we had an awesome time, hailing other small crafts (including some unamused local fishermen), sunbathing, and randomly blowing around the water at half a mile per hour. Finally the wind changed direction and we were able to hobble  back, with the aid of a passing super ferry that flew past us.

We then took a steep funicular (cable car) up to a tiny town above Como, called Brunate, which was meant to have some great restaurants. We were a bit pressed for time, as the last bus to Blevio was helpfully at 8pm. We can't tell you if the restaurants in Brunate were as good as promised, but they must be doing either really really well or really really badly, because every single one was closed when we arrived around 6:45. Typical. We enjoyed the views and caught the next car down. 

Como, as seen from Brunate

Once back in Como, we had only a few minutes so divided up three crucial elements: Matt - pizza and pasta. Audrey- prosecco. We met back at the bus stop ten minutes later, each successful, and had another delicious porch picnic at 'home' while watching the sun set over the lake.