COMO...lago

10/27/2009

Today Miles and I got up very early to being our day trip to Como. Originally we had thought that we would spend the night in a hostel in Como, but when it got time to make a decision, we thought it would be easier if we left our packs in Milan and just went out for the day. We planned to take the train to Como, which is on Lake Como, then take a boat to Bellagio, have lunch there, possibly take another boat to another town and look at this cool mansion and gardens that Miles had been to before, go back to Como to have dinner with Sandro’s boyfriend, Paulo, and then take a late train home. The train we took was on a different line than my eurail pass, but it only cost 7 euro. The boat buses around the lake were a different story. They ran on the expensive side and if you wanted to travel on a high speed boat, which made a lot of sense so you didn’t waste the majority of your day traveling on a boat, you had to pay even more.

It was a beautiful day on the lake and we got through about half of our list of things to do. We started walking around in Como and found an outdoor market to look at. It was very cheap compared to the markets in Florence. I wanted to find an Internet café because I had some emails that I needed to send out. Gabrielle’s apartment does not have Internet, but Etzia’s does. I felt bad asking to get on the internet often, so finding a café, where I catch up on some things, was imperative. At first we tried MacDonald’s because they normally have free wifi. Well in Italy, MacDonald’s only offers free wifi to people who have an Italian phone number because in order to get the login name and password, they text it to you. Eventually we came across a café and I was able to get done what I needed to.

After lunch in Bellagio, we walked around a bit, found a great point that gave us a beautiful view of the lake, and then walked back up to a gelateria we passed earlier. All of the towns around Lake Como seem like very cool places. Bellagio and Como are quite quaint and seem like a great place to have a get away vacation. Apparently George Clooney agrees because he has a house there. The boats that run around the lake include regular transportation boats, boats that you can put your car on, and hydrofoil boats. The hydrofoil boats were surprisingly very rocky. It was a very relaxing day. We got back to Como around 4 and there was a train heading back to Milan shortly after that. We were pretty tired from waking up early, so we decided to get on the train and just have dinner in Milan with Gabrielle. It would have been cool to have had dinner with Paulo, but we would have had to kill at least three hours walking around Como until he finished work and we would have gotten back into Milan extremely late, making for a very long day.

On the train back to Milan, Miles and I played a bunch of Rummy. I ended up winning the game by scoring exactly 1000 points. Very few times in my life have I ever scored the exact winning amount with cards. A bunch of high schoolers got on the train after us and were very loud, but pretty amusing also. Once again, it seems like teenagers act the same all over the world.

When we got back to Milan, Gabrielle wanted to take up to his favorite Japanese restaurant. I was pretty excited about this because I have been craving Asian food for a while now. The restaurant was a couple of blocks away from Gabrielle’s apartment, so we were able to walk there. He told us that he eats there two or three times a week. I thought this was hilarious because he is surrounded by so much good Italian food, but I suppose you could get tired of it. The Japanese restaurant was not what I expected. It was an all you can eat buffet, which had raw meat on it that you picked out what you wanted, handed it to a chef behind a grill, and he cooked it up for you. It was surprisingly good. They had a good very skinny noodle dish and egg rolls. In addition to that they had sushi (which I was a bit weary of), lo mein, veggies, fried rice, ribs, wings, and a bunch of other things. For my meat choices, I opted for shrimp, chicken, and steak. I was very full and pleased at the end of the meal and totally tickled that I was able to fulfill my Asian craving in Italy. I was planning on waiting until I got back to Germany to do this.

Speaking of Germany, Sandro made me feel much better about excluding Berlin from my plans. He did not have very good things to say about the city. Come to think about it, other than the cool history and art of the wall, I have not heard that many other good things about the city. I would love to go there eventually, but its just not going to happen on this trip. I am sure the winter has hit Berlin in full force by now, and I am very much enjoying the slow adjustment from fall to winter in Italy. Even this week in Milan, I have experienced 65-70 degree weather. Shocking myself with the cold in Berlin could be bad for my health. Hopefully when I get there eventually (I would also like to go to Russia, Prague, and Budapest then) that it will be the spring or summer. Lastly it would be such a long train ride to get there, it really is not worth it to stray too far from Italy. As for Heidelberg, sorry, I would have liked to have seen you, and maybe we can meet on that next trip.

After dinner, Miles, Gabrielle, and I went back to the apartment to start our evening activity of a rousing game a scala quarenta (sp). Gabrielle is quite the card shark and even had a green felt cloth to go over his table for card play. It was a fun night. We played for a little bit of money and ended up playing two very long games. Unfortunately, the language barrier made it very hard for Gabrielle to explain the end scoring of who won the money. The way he scored it up and the way the game went didn’t seem to match up to Miles and I. Somehow Gabrielle always won due to the results of the last two hands in each game. It didn’t really make sense to us, but we just figured it was ok and let it go.

We finished around 12 and by then I was exhausted. Miles and I decided that we weren’t going to set any alarms in the morning and were going to sleep in. We didn’t have any major plans for tomorrow, so it would be a good time to catch up on sleep. It was a very good day. It reiterated my thoughts that it is a very good deal to know some locals in an area to show you around, give good advice, and just hang out with.

Two random thoughts. In Italian the word “Alora” means “well”, like “well… I don’t know”. I really like this word a lot and love it when people use it. It just rolls off the tongue so nicely and a lot of times people put expressive hand gestures with it that I like watching. Second is that Italians don’t really like dealing with change. There is none of the silly .86 cents mess that happens in America. Also if you or they don’t have exact change, they just round it out, so sometimes you could end up getting more money back that you originally should have. What a nice and convenient cultural rule.