Varenna-Lake Como

From the Stelvio Pass we continued west on SS38 into Bormio for lunch and gelato at a little cafeteria, saving some cash.  Eleven Euro for the two of us then a couple more for gelato, as if we'd skip gelato.  From Bormio we continued west to Lake Como and the quaint town of Varenna.  The town is a small village perched on a little outcrop of mountain.  We ventured to our hotel, the Albergo Eremo Gaudio and the view of Varenna and Lake Como was real pretty.

 

 

Our hotel was built right on the side of the mountain, in multiple buildings up the side of the hill.  The parking, reception and restaurant, and we beleive a few rooms, we on the lowest level.  To reach our room, the Bellagio, and many others further up the hill, we had to ride two different elevators.  It was quite odd, the lowest elevator had a key, as did the building above.  The elevators were windowed with views of the lake, but in the afternoon those glass elevators heated up like a sauna in mid July.  They were hot, make you sweat just standing there, but our first two days of the visit had a bit of a heatwave come through the lake area.

The view from the balcony of our room, the lowest level full lake view room, was lovely:

Here's the hotel and our room from the lake:

We walked down to town and the along the lake, but Saturday night was just too crowded.  Lots of tourists, which of course we are, and we've pointedly  realized that environment is not what we're looking for on our vacation.   After 6 weeks in the country we think of ourselves almost as locals.  Funny huh, but true.  I'd much rather find where the locals eat, however it was late and the pizza smelled good at the Albergo del Sole Pizzeria so we grabbed the only available table and ordered a liter of house white wine.  The pizzas were good, we were thirsty and the wine was going down good, until I cut my finger on the decanter.  I pointed out the chip in the handle to the waitress as I ordered our next 1/2 liter of wine, she apologized and brought a band-aid.  It was just a scratch but at this point I had to put on the band-aid.  Our discussion was lively, talking about redoing the house, and it was warm, so yes, we rounded out the night with another 1/2 liter of the house white, a nice 2 liter evening.  The waitress brought the bill and they didn't charge us for the final 1/2 liter, not much better than free wine!

Our next morning was lazy, breakfast and just napping, relaxing was high on our list of needs for the trip.  We headed out around noon for a walk to 

Villa Monastero, located down the hill.  It was a nice walk around the grounds, the villa has about 1km of lakefront, and the estate was beautiful.  It was built recently, about four hundred years ago.  I really liked the bathroom, check this thing out, nice deep tub and a great backdrop:

The lake was beautiful from the gardens:

 

 

We headed down to the lakefront in town to grab some food, a little pizza and such.  It was very hot and the place had sundaes with gelato, naturally we enjoyed them.

 

 

We stopped at a macelleria on the way back to the room, picking up some salame, proscuitto and formaggio, as well as some crackers, for an evening snack and lunch the following day.  We then headed to the hotel for some relaxing and to watch the sunset.

 

Another wonderful day in Italy.