Lake Como and Lugano, Switzerland

Ciao!

After we walked around downtown Milan with a LOT of other people, we made our way out of the Plaza and found our rental van again. We got ready for an 90 minute drive, and drove to Lake Como.

DRIVING RESPONSIBILITIES. Throughout the trip, Frank drove the van the whole time. It was nice, though, that he got to 'spread the wealth' of

This was my view, for the whole trip!
from the passenger seat in the van.
(Frank wears wrist protection on long
drives to avoid carpal-tunnel symptoms)

responsibilities, to David a little bit. David found an app for his phone that pulled up maps of Italian city streets. He could type in our next destination, and it would find us, then he could tell Frank, "turn right at the next roundabout," or "not this next exit, but the next."

view from inside the car, driving towards Switzerland

It was NOT flawless or stress-free, of course! Sometimes it would not find us until we had already passed the street we were supposed to turn on. David would say "Oh." (as in, "great: NOW it found us...") "Sorry, you need to turn around as soon as you can."

looking down from our balcony--they're eating
breakfast on the dock

Or, we would be approaching an exit and Frank would slow down: "Is it showing that we should turn? Is it this one?" And David would be at the mercy of the slow app! "It doesn't say yet...okay, yes -- turn HERE!"  A fly on the wall of the van would have been laughing, I'm sure.

Mom DID go on this trip! Here's proof :)

Kara greeting the day from our balcony

LAKE COMO. Wow. I can only say "Wow!" This is a place where George Clooney has a summer home with his wife, Amal (an attorney who also happens to be beautiful). We took a little while to find our condo...like I said, the app was not without delays and a little confusion at times. So it was getting dark when we finally got there, and the nice little lady next door helped us confirm that this was, indeed the right address and then the owner showed up with a big smile. All was well!

Lake Como view from the balcony. Yes, really :)

We woke up to a gorgeous view of the lake. Everybody got up and had the same response: "Oooooh! Wow! Beautiful!" We took pics and walked around.

AIR BNB. I have to say that airbnb.com worked out wonderfully for us this trip! It's a website of places to stay all over the world (U.S. included--LOTS of places available nationally). People either make their homes available, or a room in their home, or they own an apartment that they rent out, and they live 5 minutes away or something. You can look at pictures, and read reviews, and email back and forth with them before you officially book a room with them.  This whole trip we used airbnb, renting the whole unit so we always had a kitchen and space to spread out. AND, we met some really nice people! Our only miscommunication was with one lady, ONE night of the stay. It was awesome.

SWITZERLAND. One afternoon we drove to Switzerland. Yes, a short drive over the border, is the town of Lugano.

We wandered around downtown Lugano, and walked in to a grocery store. We made a point of buying some yogurt flavors we don't have in the U.S., and of course Swiss chocolate!

We had that as a snack, and bought enough to last us awhile...

TRAGEDY. Then at the next condo, we put our chocolate in the refrigerator and forgot about it. YES! UGH! We left withOUT our chocolate!! :( :( :(

Oh well, such is life, right! Funny story with that: when we returned from the trip, we got a note from that lady where we left the chocolate in the fridge. "THANK YOU for leaving me chocolate in the refrigerator," she says! Then a side: "I hope you didn't forget it...I am eating it in your honor." We did get a chuckle out of that.

Kari

Part One: Iceland and Milan

Ciao!

We just came home from a whirlwind trip to Italy. David was home from his mission for 3 weeks, and in that time Kara finished her finals at the high school.

I'll start a summary of our trip, hopefully without giving TOO much detail...the idea is not to put people to sleep -- snore -- but to remember the highlights! Ha.

Iceland Road Sign

End of the Rainbow art at the
Iceland airport

The good thing about a blog is that you can also just click on the pictures, and look at photos! No offense will be taken if you only look at the pictures! :) :) :)

(**SIDE NOTE: if you click on the pictures, they are BIGGER.)

Geothermal activity in Iceland

The evening of June 24, we flew away to Milan, via Iceland. It's about 5 hours from Boston to Iceland, then another 4 or something to Milan.

ICELAND. We had something like a 6- or 7-hour layover in Iceland, so we rented a car and drove around. They have lots of natural parks with waterfalls and geothermal activity.

By the waterfall. Kind of chilly but not too bad.

FUN ICELAND FACTS:
1. over half of their energy comes from geothermal activity.
2. the island country is roughly the size of Ohio.
3. beer was illegal here until 1989.

It was overcast and rained some while we were there. We walked the boardwalk trails and saw waterfalls and geysers.

Geysers

FLOWERS. There were also these great fields of tens of thousands of purple flowers -- wow! We drove by them all morning, and I dropped hints to Frank that it was so hard to photograph them in a moving car...after all our driving, and we were getting closer to the airport, Frank took pity and pulled over for me to get some flower shots. :) Winner!

Here are Iceland pics.

MILAN. We got to Milan in the dark, at 10:30 at night, then we waited for all the paperwork, etc., to rent our van. At 11:30 p.m. we didn't see much on the way to the Hotel Ascot.

I know it's just a van. But we spent SO much time in it! :)

CHURCH. In the morning we made an attempt to find the church building...we knew it was close and what street it was on, but kept driving by it back and forth...turns out it was in the BACK of a building, and the sign was kind of out of the way (?!?!), so we made it to the last half of Sacrament Meeting. We tried.

Big cathedral downtown Milan

In the afternoon, it was fun to go downtown and see the Italian architecture around, and we visited a castle.

The castle was next to a beautiful park and gardens, where we found lunch.

coconut display

FERAL CATS. This was the beginning of seeing cats around everywhere...they don't belong to anyone, they are just...around.  There was a cute kitten at the Bed & Breakfast when we stayed along the Amalfi Coast. That will come in a later post.

We spent lots of time waiting for the green "Walk" guy to show up at the intersections...

And throughout the cities in Italy, they have fountains where you can get a drink or fill up your water bottle. We waited for this cute little boy to finish, then filled our bottles.

Have a great weekend! Kari