The Lakes

For our second and last weekend with Tim’s parents, we went north of Milan to the lake region. The three biggest lakes close to us are Lago Maggiore, Lago di Como, and Lago di Lugano. Lago Maggiore is the largest, and was the one we saw with my parents, Como is probably the most well known, and Lugano is the one we stayed on. Our hotel was in Italy, but most of the lake is in Switzerland.

Our hotel was right on the lake! The view and the flowers decorating our hotel patio gave it an idyllic atmosphere. We had planned on touring the area of Lugano the first day, but it was really raining, so we sat in our room, enjoyed our view, and played board games. Not a total loss of an afternoon!

 Feeding Ben's Cheerios...

 ...to a swan!

 Views from our hotel, patio, and dock right on the water

That night we found out that the road between our hotel and town was going to be closed for the Tour de Suisse. Our hotel director suggested we head the other direction to Lake Como. This was already our tentative plan, so that’s what we did. It was still raining when we woke up, so we were disappointed about that, but by the time we got going, it had cleared up, and by the time we made it to Como, the sun was shining bright. We boarded a touring ferry, and went around the middle part of the lake for an hour before disembarking at two cute little towns, Bellagio and Varenna. During dinner, the wind picked up and the temperatures dropped, and just when we were getting ready to leave, the skies opened up. Tim and I made a mad dash to get the car for the parents and Ben. It was raining so hard we all got a bit wet nonetheless, but no harm done. We drove by several new waterfalls on the way back.

 The boat we were about to board, Ben's first boat ride!

 Bellagio from the boat

We heard it raining in the wee hours Sunday morning (when Ben was up), but again, it stopped before we went out, and we had a beautiful day. We went back into Switzerland to go to the castles of Bellinzona. We went to the highest castle first, the one we never made it to with my parents. Luckily we drove up this time, because it was neat, but would not have been worth the hike up. On the way down we stopped at the middle castle, then drove down to the big castle. We got paninis before going into the castle, and Ben ate a decent sized chunk of mine, in tiny pieces. Tim’s parents enjoyed the castle, and then we headed home so they could pack. They made it back to the US slightly delayed, but otherwise uneventful.

The highest castle, Sasso Corbaro

 The middle castle, Montebello

 The oldest castle, Castelgrande

On a side note, I am almost positive we saw Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and his new wife walking around at Lake Como. They had been honeymooning in Rome the week before. And then I saw pictures in People magazine of George Clooney on his boat there on Monday, two days after we were there.