Round trip...

Playlist

Various Composers – Adagio Box Set

Various – Shine On

Various - Shuffleplay

Rose early again and, this morning, under the still-up moon, I noticed a small fire in the woods above the house. The smoke gave off a wonderful aroma...

At 8, I drove over to Zelbio to the second of the two shops there and bought more provisions...

...then drove on up the road to see what was there – I came across a high meadow with more restaurants and news of some kind of festival to take place there tomorrow...

After breakfast we set off for Switzerland....

Down the mountain, then to Como, filled up the tank, found the motorway and, around 11am we crossed the border, only to be ripped off by the Swiss Border Authorities for a badge to allow us to travel on their motorways until the end of January 2007 – it cost 30 Euros (£20) – we were on their motorway for 20 minutes. Great!

We parked in Lugano and walked to the lake and along its shore. Hot and sunny again...

We made our way into the old town. It had a very affluent feel to it in comparison to Italy...

We took some Swiss Francs from an ATM and had lunch in the restaurant of a big department store where mountains of freshly prepared food and fruit were served up buffet style to the Swiss and tourists alike. I imagined what this would be like in the UK and shuddered at the thought of badly heated food sitting for hours under hot lamps...

We picked up the car and headed north to a funicular we’d read about but, at £10 per person it was a bit steep (ha ha!) and so we drove on and up the lake, stopping off at a tiny village called Gandria, whose lakeside setting promised much but delivered less due to most of the lakeside land being privately owned with no access...

We continued up the lake and eventually crossed back into Italy, parking up at Porlezza where we bought some fruit at the local market and sat lakeside enjoying some freshly squeezed orange juice...

We decided to keep going rather than head back down through Switzerland and soon we were back on the shores of Lake Como, but a ferry crossing away from our peninsula...

After a coffee and watching a procession of various strange folklore groups parading past as we sat outside a bar in Mennagio, just across the lake from Bellagio..

...we drove a further few kilometres down the shore to Cadenabbia and took the car ferry back over to Bellagio...

...before driving south again to Nesso and up the mountain road to Veleso...

In the evening we went back up into the meadow where I’d been this morning and to a restaurant there...

 ...where we went the whole hog and had anti pasti (cold meats and pickled vegetables with bread), prima (mushroom risotto and gnocchi) and secundi (venison and polenta with frites and salad) – drink was provided by Mr Weissbier and Mrs White Wine...

A big mistake really as Anne was fairly full after the starter and neither of us could manage any of the polenta...

Our one and only real blowout of the trip though...

Home we drove, well and truly stuffed...

Highlight of the Day : Visiting Switzerland