Because It's Relaxation Time

Yes, I know it's been a while since I updated and yes, I will eventually finish talking about this trip we took in May. We're halfway through :-)

So, we woke up at the crack of dawn the next day, still tired from our walking adventure through Dublin, to head off to the airport. We waited in line to drop off our rental car (price you pay for getting there before the rental counter opens), got to the terminal, were impressed with the shear number of people leaving Dublin at 5:45 am, and got to our gate. We spent our approximately three hour flight to Milan asleep. Yes, passed clean out. I told you we were tired. Mr. B woke up just in time to wake me up to look out the window at the tops of the snow-capped Alps. We had a, "We are flying over the ALPS!" moment and quickly realized that meant we were almost to our destination. Suddenly we weren't nearly as tired.

We arrived at the airport in Milan, exited our plane onto the tarmac, were herded into a shuttle bus, and driven the rest of the way to the terminal. Now, I think of Milan as a fairly cosmopolitan city with great fashion. The airport was no reflection of that. It was, well, utilitarian. After grabbing our bags and realizing that we were no longer in a country where English is the national language, we purchased our bus tickets to get to the train station. We sat, and sat, and sat while the bus filled up, then went on our merry way to Milan Centrale, the giant train station decorated in majestic, Mussolini-inspired paintings and reliefs. We were several hours early for our train and decided to try to catch an earlier one. Being unfamiliar in the way of trains, we went to stand in line to hopefully change our tickets. As it turns out, the tickets are fairly interchangeable, so we had no problem switching to an earlier train. In the meantime, it was time for lunch. We found a counter and ordered--you guessed it!--PIZZA!

With cheese.

It was glorious.

As a side note, I spent an entire week in Italy eating cheese on pizza to my heart's content and had virtually no headache issues. I am taking this as a sign that I need to move to Italy. Or that I just need to relax more.

So, after our first Italian pizza, we went to the train platform, validated our tickets, and hopped onto our train. We had a lovely chat with an American couple from Kansas City sitting across from us. They had been in Spain earlier in their trip for a Bruce Springsteen concert. After a pretty comfortable ride, we arrived in Varenna.

Our hotel was a quick walk down the street from the station, so we grabbed our bags and headed downhill, toward the beautiful water of Lake Como. We got to our hotel, got checked in, and went upstairs to our awesomely 80s-tastic room.

Our thought was to rest a bit, maybe relax with some Italian TV, before heading out to explore the small town. Of course, the bed was hard as a rock and the TV didn't work, so we opted to go out in search of adventure instead.

This is what greeted us at the shoreline. Varenna is beautiful, peaceful, and did I mention beautiful? Across the lake you have mountains, beyond the town on your side of the lake you have mountains, the lake is clear and cold, and the buildings of the town are charming.

As we explored the town, we found the church of San Giorgio, in the Piazza de San Giorgio. When we went inside, I was amazed at how people of that time could get such ornate decorations to such a remote place. Then our attention was drawn to an elderly gentleman sitting at one of the altars. It sounded as if he was weeping. We exited the church to give him some privacy and walked around the square a bit. As we were leaving to walk on, he came out of the church and glanced our direction. It was a face so full of sadness that I wanted to hug him.

We got some gelato, and then we picked a cafe by the water, sat down, and began drinking the house wine and eating. We did that pretty much the whole time we were in Varenna. Not a bad way to pass a couple of days. And it was delicious.

By the time we finished exploring and eating, and exploring and eating again, and finding the cafe with wifi, night had come. We left this beautiful view to head back to our hotel to do laundry. You see, we had each only packed one carry-on sized suitcase, which was a great idea considering all the moving around we were doing. Unfortunately, it meant that at some point on our trip, we would need to do laundry. We tried to find the laundromat in Varenna that was clearly marked on the map and that we had confirmed from several people existed at that location, but we never found it. Not to fear! Rick Steves had told us that doing laundry in the sink of your hotel room is no big deal! What Rick didn't tell us is that you need to make sure that your hotel room has plenty of ventilation or your clothes won't dry. And that it takes a really long time to wash your clothes in the sink. Oh, and that they aren't really clean. But that will take us through the next day :-)

Up next: Will Bellagio live up to the Vegas hype? Will they survive the ferry ride? Will their clothes ever dry?