Monday, July 2, 2012

Day 4 (Como and Milan)

On Monday, Jachen took the day off work and we decided to start our grand adventure of going to Italy for a few days.  The plan was to go to Lake Como with Monica and Jachen, at which point we would depart from them to stay in Milan for a night, then two nights in Venice, then back to Milan for a night and end back up in Switzerland on Friday.

Here's our plan for the first day:


To get to Como, we had to drive directly south from Switzerland and go through the Alps.  Here we are in some alpine town taking a potty and rock throwing break.

The town that we stopped in was rather picturesque, so we of course decided to take a family picture.  Hey Henry, how about you smile for once?
We left at about 9:30am, and we arrived in Menaggio, Italy at around 1pm.  After easily finding a place to park we went about exploring the town:



The five of us had a nice little picnic along the banks of Lake Como.





Our plan for Como was to take a ferry from Menaggio to Varenna.  From Varenna, we would leave Jachen and Monica and travel by train to Milan.
  On the ferry, Henry was intrigued by the place where the captain went.

 Our first views of Varenna:
 Is this real life?
We hoping to find some lockers in Varenna to ditch our bags, but the train station was literally a hole in the wall.  So instead we ending up hauling our stuff all over the town.  The town was quite beautiful and sleepy.  You may remember parts of Como from the time that Anakin Skywalker tried to make out with Natalie Portman in that really bad movie.


I forgot to mention that it was really hot in Varenna (and Italy in general).  Due to the fact that we were carrying all of our belongings with us, I wouldn't say that our time in Varenna was very relaxing.  We walked around what streets we could -- most of Varenna was a series of steps that we couldn't get up due to Henry in a stroller.  We ate some gelato and then we were pretty much ready to leave.

Through a miracle we caught a train that wasn't supposed to be coming.  All of the schedules said that there wouldn't be another train for 2 hours, however, we took our chance and walked the 10 minutes up to the train station just to check.  We ended up getting there 2 minutes before an unscheduled train showed up.  We were so grateful because we were pretty hot and tired and ready to get to Milan.

Steph says this is a picture of Henry and I making the same expression.
This is what we do when we are really tired.  Let Yo Gabba Gabba do its magic.

We arrived in Milan, and checked in our Hotel and immediately went in search of some food.  Mostly I wanted to come to Italy to eat a lot of thin crust pizza.  Round One:
After dinner, we cruised around Milan.  We saw a lot of scooters in Milan. Here is what I saw stopped at one intersection.
Chillin at the Public Garden.

Ready for Venice yet?  Let's go tomorrow!

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