After breakfast we put our 4-day vaporetto pass to good use and motored up the Grand Canal to the Rialto market.  It was fun to watch the locals haggle over fish and produce.  Private gondola rides in Venice are very expensive and perhaps overrated.  So instead, we took the traghetto (transportation gondola) across the Grand…

On the way to Venice, we stopped in Verona for some sightseeing.  Verona is famous for being the setting of Shakespeare’s play ‘Romeo and Juliet’. This 14th C residence with a tiny balcony overlooking a courtyard is said to be Juliet’s House (Casa di Giulietta),  although the romantic balcony was actually added in 1930 after…

This morning we checked out of our amazing agriturismo hotel and took the car ferry from Bellagio to Varenna.  A quick drive up the coast has brought us to the town of Bellano for a nature walk. The Orrido di Bellano is a natural gorge created 15 million years ago from erosion by the river…

This morning we drove from Bellagio to Nesso on the western arm of Lake Como.  The road is narrow with lots of twists and turns, but was somehow a less stressful drive than the road into Bellagio. Perhaps because it was only a short drive… The town is split in two by the Orrido di…

This morning we took the passenger ferry from Bellagio across to Tremezzo on the west side of Lake Como and walked to the Villa Carlotta in Tremezzina. Lake Como has always been an important area of trade and a home for the wealthy. As early as the Roman period, affluent aristocrats settled in Como and…

The interlake ferry run by the Navigazione Laghi has a schedule of sorts, but it is posted in Italian only and the boats are often late!  The ticket-sellers and boatmen are sometimes helpful but seem to lose patience quickly with dumb tourists and their dumb questions. Despite concerns about long line-ups for tickets, we had…

We left the coast this morning and headed north.  We stopped in Milan for lunch and to visit their beautiful duomo.  The Milan cathedral is known world-wide for its hundreds (thousands?) of sculptures both inside and out. An elevator took us up to the roof to see the marble pinnacles and flying buttresses.  Each spire…

The Via Garibaldi is a narrow alley containing multiple former palazzos belonging to the Genovese gentry.  Most of the houses date from the early 16th Century and are now banks or offices.  This converted Palazzo is now the consulate for Monaco.  Three of the most beautiful palazzos have been turned into a combination of museum…

Genova was likely established in the 5th C BC and ranks among the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.  The Casa di Colombo is a restoration of the 2-story home where Christopher Columbus lived as a teenager (the original was destroyed by a French raid in the 17th C).  Other countries have claimed to…