Living La Dolce Vita

Lake Como

Buongiorno from Italia! What a change it has been to come to Italy. When we arrived in Como from snowy Switzerland yesterday afternoon it was still cloudy, but noticeably warmer. And today it was gloriously sunny and reached a high of 67! It is like we've been transported into another world, yet we only drove a little more than two hours.


Como and its cathedral from the lake

Even though we knew what to expect, there was initially some culture shock in the change from orderly Germany and Switzerland to chaotic Italy. Navigating the old town of Como to find our hotel was something of an adventure! But of course it is all worth it for the sunshine and famous beauty of Italy, and we are very excited to be here.

We've had such fun in Como. After settling in last night, we visited the family home where David lived for a year, which is only 20 minutes by train from Como. It was very cool for him to see what had changed and what hadn't, and I enjoyed sharing a bit of his past. Back in Como we had good pizza in the restaurant connected to our hotel, the Albergo del Duca.

This morning we visited a Romanesque church here in Como and then went on a boat ride around Lake Como! It was a slow ferry with open-air decks and it stopped at several picturesque villages along the way. The lake is so beautiful, surrounded by mountains on all sides. George Clooney lives along the shore, and we saw his house!


One of the hillside towns along Lake Como

After an hour and 45 minutes of scenery, we got off the boat in the village of Bellagio. We wandered the narrow alleys and steep stone stairways for a couple hours, David had a delicious cappuccino, and we had a tasty late lunch of pasta. The church turned out to be a nice old Romanesque one, too.







Bellagio is said to be one of the prettiest towns on Lake Como and quite popular with tourists. Indeed, on the streets we definitely heard more English and German than Italian. (The German-speakers are suddenly just as "foreign" as we are!) But probably because it's the low season, it still didn't feel very touristy. Souvenir stands were almost nonexistent, the streets were quiet and peaceful, and everything still felt authentically Italian - just with a lot of happy foreign visitors. It was fantastic.

The next two days we'll just be working on making our way south. Tomorrow we'll drive about four hours and stop for the night in Pesaro. Then we'll drive four more hours to Lucera, the first of two bases for exploring Puglia. Both days should be pretty uneventful, so hopefully we'll have time to post a few more photos and memories of Como to the blog tomorrow night or the next night.

Train Ride to St. Moritz

Today we took a train ride from Chur to St. Moritz, which takes two hours each way. The Alpine scenery was just as lovely as you would expect - magnificent white peaks, small villages, clear blue mountain streams - and the train was clean and efficient, as always in Switzerland.






We spent two hours wandering around St. Moritz, which has a fantastic location among the mountains and overlooking a large lake (currently frozen). The town wasn't quite as slick as I'd expected but we had a very nice time looking around. It was especially cool for David to see it again since he had visited during his year in Italy after high school. And it's the setting for a James Bond movie, too.


Shuttle service leaving from the Palace Hotel


One of several small squares

We found a great place for lunch, out on a terrace overlooking mountains, a snowy field, and the village. It was a bit cold at times, but mostly quite lovely sitting in the sun.


Our lunch spot


We both had the St Galler sausage with rosti. It was good.


Our view of the village from the table. Note the leaning church tower!

There are some more photos of the train ride here and of St. Moritz here.

It is a good thing we are only in Switzerland for two nights, because it is seriously expensive! The Swiss Franc is almost exactly 1:1 with the American dollar and the prices are high. A small bottle of Pepsi on the train was $4.50, for instance.

But Switzerland is great and it was well worth stopping here in Chur. We love the sense of order and the fact that fresh, drinkable mountain water comes out of fountains all around the city. Interestingly, after being in Germany for so long, we could really hear the difference in Swiss German this time around. Many of the words are even entirely different. So that means we understood even less than usual! But we got by just fine with some English from them and some basic "High German" from us.

Tomorrow we leave for Como, which is just south of the Alps in Italy. We'll be there for two nights before we begin the long drive south down the east coast to Puglia!

Neuschwanstein and Chur, Switzerland

Yesterday was our day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle, and we had such a good time. The castle is located in the very south of Bavaria, close to the Austrian border. The drive was beautiful and a lot more Alpine than I expected. As a bonus, we found a great radio station with traditional German music, just the sort you'd hear on a Rick Steves show about Bavaria.


There was lots of snow on the ground and it was as cold and windy as ever, but the roads were clear and we even got some moments of glorious sunshine during our castle visit.


Our faithful Fiat, pulled over for photos when the castle first came into view.

To visit Neuschwanstein, one must pay for parking in the village below, stand in a long line for only three stalls in the ladies room, stand in another line for admission tickets, join the crowd of other American, Italian and Japanese visitors streaming up the 30-mile steep walk to the castle itself, where you wait for your tour number to appear on a digital signboard. The crowds were actually pretty bearable and the lines not too long, but I shudder to imagine what it's like in July!


Small tourist-oriented village below the castle


Walk to the castle


Neuschwanstein brings out the poser in everyone.

But it's all worth it, especially this time of year. Both of us were won over to the castle's charms despite it being so new (1880s) and only slightly less "fake" than the Cinderella version at Disneyland (it was built to recreate a Romantic vision of the Middle Ages). But it really is lovely and the stuff of fairy tales.





But the best part is its gorgeous location in the foothills of the Alps. It overlooks two blue lakes and a green valley and sheer cliffs rise up behind it. Really incredible, and we can easily understand why King Ludwig wanted to live here. We'd build a medieval-looking castle there too, if we could.

The guided tour was quite short. The interior was very elaborately decorated, but mostly tastefully so. Photos weren't allowed, but I can see why that's important to keep the tour moving. Our tour guide had the worst accent I've ever heard from a German, which sounded like a screechy Australian accent mixed with German. Odd. But it was nice to have the tour in English at all, unlike at the Wartburg. Incidentally, the Wartburg was one of the inspirations for this castle.


The highlight of our visit was after the tour, when we searched out the way to get to this bridge behind the castle.


It turns out the path to the bridge is not technically passable in winter. But why should we let silly barriers like this get in the way of good fun and good photos? so we followed lots of other visitors in climbing around and over various fences to go to the bridge.

The path wasn't actually dangerous. They just hadn't cleared the path of snow and ice, which made for some slippery moments. But the paths were wide and the guard rails were good so the worst that would happen is to fall on your butt. Happily, we didn't. I did briefly pull something in my leg after swinging it over a fence, but recovered quickly. Sucks getting old.


The walk was even further uphill, so we sure got our exercise that day! But it was so beautiful and the view from the bridge was worth it. Like the castle, the bridge was carefully placed by King Ludwig to provide maximum impact of Romantic beauty. He did good!


View from the bridge


The castle on the way back down our illegal path.

When our weary and freezing bones reached the bottom again, we stopped for a late lunch in the first restaurant that looked open. We had a decent meal of goulash soup and salad (for David) and schnitzel with kasespatzle (cheese dumplings) (for me). We made it back to our comfortable hotel room just before dark and barely moved the rest of the night. Sucks being old.

This morning we packed up and departed for Switzerland! It is really fun being in a new country. We've been in Germany for several months and it's time for something new. Mostly we are ready for new weather! But for the next two nights, it's more snow for us, as we have stopped over in Chur, Switzerland.

The drive started out pretty bad, with swirling snow and strong wind blowing the semi-trucks around. But it improved before too long, and the rest of our drive south was lovely, usually surrounded by mountains. We went briefly through Austria (a leg that consisted mostly of a very long tunnel) before arriving in Switzerland and the freeway went along the border of Lichtenstein for awhile before we reached Chur.



Sadly we did not get our passports stamped at the border (Switzerland is not part of the European Union so it seemed a possibility), but we did get stopped to pay a toll for the privilege of using Switzerland's fine roads. The border control officer first spoke to David in French, which really confused me since we were in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Then David reminded me we have French license plates! Ah oui, bien sûr.


Pulled over at the border to pay our toll.

Chur (pronounced "koor") is a nice little Alpine city, but not super exciting. I mainly chose it because it is in a good location halfway to Italy.




Chur has a small cathedral, which has a very interesting interior and is filled with wonderful Romanesque carvings! They are in a dark grey stone that I don't love, but the sculptures are very interesting:







Our hotel room in Chur (partially shown below) is nice; adequately piney and lodgey but not quite the Timberline Lodge sort of place I'd imagined from their website. There are also some noisy renovations going on in the entrance area, but everything is very clean and the receptionist couldn't be nicer.



After an exploration of the town we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was stupendous. Again, didn't bring the camera and I'm sorry I didn't. David had the "Chur Councilman's Plate" which included a small steak and veal and small delicious dumplings whose name we can't remember. I had a really unusual dish called Maluns, which consisted of finely chopped potato mixed with some kind of grain, served with homemade applesauce and slices of Alpine cheese. It is apparently a local specialty and it was so very good.

Augsburg

Happy Easter and greetings from Augsburg! Augsburg is a fairly large city not far from Munich in Bavaria. It doesn't have the narrow-winding-street charm of Bamberg or Regensburg, but it has a fine Old Town and some very nice churches.

We are staying in the Dorint Hotel, which is about 10 minutes walk from the Old Town. It is in an unusual concrete round tower and the rooms are decorated in a retro '70s style.



David was curious about the building's date and found a whole Wikipedia article on it - apparently it was built in 1972 and is a close copy of the Marina City Towers in Chicago.



Every room has a round balcony, and ours overlooks a nice little park. Mostly it's too cold to enjoy it, but it works great as a refrigerator for our Pepsi Max we brought from Regensburg!

We continue to have very cold temperatures, a whole lot of wind, and a mix of snow and sun. It was snowing when we checked in to our hotel, but then the sun conveniently came out for a late afternoon exploration of the town. Here are a few photos from our walk.






Augsburg Cathedral is a mix of Romanesque and Gothic and has lots of interesting sculptures, paintings and murals:













This evening we had a delicious Easter dinner in our hotel restaurant. They had a special buffet for the occasion, which included grilled turkey, steak, fish, German potato salad, assorted veggies, stuffed vine leaves, tortellini with cream sauce, roasted potatoes, and really good bread. For dessert there were several different kinds of pudding, including an odd one that tasted almost exactly like cake batter.

Last night we had dinner at the hotel also, and we had some seriously fabulous pasta. David chose spaghetti with dill cream sauce topped with salmon and I had penne bolognese. Both were perfect. Breakfast is pretty good here too, complete with an omelette bar. This morning they include a loaf of the Easter bread we've seen in bakery windows, which is a soft white loaf with raisins and slivered almonds. Very nice.

We are based here in Augsburg for two more nights and tomorrow we are making a day trip down the "Romantic Road" to the Neuschwanstein Castle, a.k.a. the "Cinderella Castle." On Tuesday we leave for Switzerland on our way to Italy!