I can imagine why the Catholic Church build Gallio Palace on the shore of Lake Como:
We didn't make it to the palace because we were distracted by food. I'll have more to say about Wednesday's dinner in my next couple of posts.
After Venice, we stayed here, way up in the hills above Gravedona on Lake Como:
It was gorgeous, and Mariella was a gracious and lovely host. Just one thing, though. It's 825 m up in the foothills of the Alps, reachable on a winding road with 6 km of switchbacks, ending at this driveway:
In this car:
We named the little guy Boba Fiat. It's not one of those high-powered North American models; no, it's a 0.9-liter European model that took four attempts to get up the Agriturismo's driveway the first time. (The trick turned out to be revving the engine up to 3,000 RPM and sliding the clutch in slowly.)
Boba Fiat got us all over Northern Italy on one tank of petrol, though. That was helpful.
The Venetian church, viewed from the terrace of the Hotel Danieli:
I took 324 photos on Monday, so I'm not all the way through them yet. I'll just start with a photo of our hotel's lobby. We stayed at the Hotel Danieli, a 193-year-old hotel in a 600-year-old building:
This was our one hotel splurge. I do not know the exact bill, except that it was approximately the same as the next four nights' lodging combined.
Yesterday I bought the Sunday Chicago Tribune for the first time in years. Sadly, I didn't buy it to read. It's just packing material.
Did I mention I hate moving?
I've got about 990 photographs to comb through, which I'll start doing later this afternoon. Meanwhile I'm unpacking so I can do laundry and pack again.
It's weird to think I'll only be in my house another seven days after spending the last nine away from it.
First of many:
Many more coming. So far I've shot 930 images...and haven't even seen all of them yet.
I'm in a remote area with slow Internet for the next couple of days. You will see photos, and descriptions, and probably Yelp reviews coming up...but for today and probably a lot of tomorrow, less so. (Click on the globe icon below for some insight.)
It turned out, visiting Venice for only one day worked exactly right. More on that, too, as time warrants.