Saturday - End of Week 1

Today is the big drive day. Actually it’s not that big – 5 hours on the motorway from Cortona in Tuscany to Bellagio on Lake Como. It’s all on motorways, so all fast driving. We checked out of the villa Casa Coccola at 9:00am, said our good byes to Hillary and Debbie and got on the road.

After a quick burst along the speedway (a smaller motorway – dual carriage way, a bit like an English A road), we hit the A1 – the main motorway in Italy that runs from Milan in the North to Naples in the south. We’d already come from Rome up to Cortona on the A1, and would now take it all the way to Milan.

The road up to Florence was good fast driving, with interesting country side whizzing by. You just set your speed and go – 140 seemed to fit in well, and had me passing and being passed at a fairly constant rate. As we approached Florence, the smog became visible, so we were glad we’d decided to skip visiting there on this trip. From Florence to Bologna the road was as windy and undulating as a motorway can get (not very), but with lots of tunnels and more cars, the driving required much more concentration. We were held up for a while by some road works and then a crash.

From Bologna (home of Ducati Motorcycles), you could draw a line with a ruler past Modena (home of Ferrari), Parma(home of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese) all the way to Milan. The road was flat, straight and boring. I wondered how many Ferraris had hit their highest ever recorded speed within 15 minutes of leaving the factory on the flat and smooth 3 lane motorway that would start them on their European tour. In celebration of that thought, I let the wee Peugeot run along a bit and it seemed to get to 175 without any real effort. The fastest cars we saw were a BMW330 police car (good car) with its siren flashing and a VW van – not sure why he was in such a hurry.

The trip on the A1 to Milan cost 21 Euros – not bad for 4 hours driving. We then got onto the A9 for 30ks up to the town of Como at the bottom of Lake Como, before we began the long and winding road along the side of Lake Como to Bellagio at the join of the two arms. From flat, straight and boring the roads all of a sudden became narrow, hilly and windy. By comparison, Wellington’s winding hill streets are a highway and its drivers timid and courteous by comparison to the mad locals in their Fiat Puntos. We had a somewhat nerve wracking half hour tip toeing round blind corners in small towns, hugging rock walls, doing emergency braking maneuvers, avoiding cyclists, motor scooters and the fearless local pedestrians.

The most impressive thing though is the views – Como is a beautiful long narrow lake with little villages all along its steep sides. With the deep blue water, the greenery of the forests and the orange tiled roofs of the buildings, it really is a sight to behold. The lake starts off as two separate arms in Como and Lecco, which join at Bellagio before continuing up to Gera Lario near the Swiss border. Despite being one body of water, There is actually two lakes – Lake Como, which runs the full length of the lake from Como and Lake Lecco which is the other arm and runs from Lecco up to Bellagio. We plan to spend our week taking boat trips all around the lake and walking between the towns.

By this stage, it was after 2pm and we hadn’t eaten anything all day. We thought we’d stop on the motorway, but then we remembered that would be motorway food. Then we planned to stop at a small town between Milan and Como, but didn’t see anything that appealed – fussy eh. Then we planned to stop at one of the small towns beside the lake, but there weren’t any car parks, so we eventually got to Bellagio, parked the car, checked out where the apartment was and then headed for some lunch.

While enjoying lunch, there was a huge commotion on the street outside the restaurant – cars revving, people yelling, whistling and clapping. I looked around and saw the pointed nose of what was obviously a very exotic little car. I wasn’t sure what it was, until it went past and the 4 exhaust pipes clustered in a circle in the centre of the rear of the car identified it as a Pagani Zonda. Although it had now left, there seemed to be more and more people taking photos of something else, so I stood up and there, lined up down the street, was a long line of Zonda’s. On further investigation it turns out that they are on the ‘Vanishing Point’ Rally – the name of a 1970’s car chase movie – and Bellagio is one of the stop off points. The ‘Rally’ came with its own support vehicles and vans, which I am assuming were carrying the luggage. Even with the horsepower of the Zonda, I’d still put money on the locals in their Fiat Panda’s and bad attitude to paint work to being able to get to Como quicker.

Our apartment is perfectly positioned in the centre of town right next to the Hotel Metropole. It is right on the lakes edge on the second floor, so we get fantastic views across the lake to Mennagio, Caddanabia Tremezzo and Lenno on the other side of the lake. There are two balconies, one outside the living room and one outside the bedroom, so we can sit out in the evening with a glass of wine and watch the world go by.