We stayed at the Albergo del Duca, which is on the small Piazza Mazzini in the old town. It was an excellent location, only a few minutes from the lake and from the cathedral. The downside is that it was in the pedestrianized district so our sat-nav only brought us to the closest plaza that allowed cars. That meant I had to hop out and ask a man at a magazine stand for directions. Fortunately I remembered how to say "where is" in Italian by the time I got there, but after he gave me the directions I said Danke instead of Grazie. It has been a bit of an adjustment to change our language over!
Hotel Albergo del Duca
We saw other hotels named Albergo-Something and we really wondered who this guy is, until I looked it up in my phrase book and discovered it means "hotel." Oops. Our hosts spoke little English but were very nice and helpful. We were able to park our car in a nice little courtyard next to the hotel, which was safely enclosed behind a wooden door each night. They even parked and extracted our car for us, which was great. Our room was smallish but nice and clean; we'd recommend it.
Alfa Romeo police car
Piazza San Fidele, the only square that David remembered clearly from 22 years ago.
Evening light in Como after our boat ride
Facade of the Duomo (cathedral)
Romanesque church of Sant Abbondio (11th century).
We visited this church the first morning in Como, somewhat on a whim. David woke up before I did and walked down to the pier on the lake to watch the boats and the fishermen. When I got up I met him down there, and we both soaked up our first real experience of warm sunshine in a long time. We intended to head back to the hotel for breakfast after that, but the church (researched the night before) didn't sound too far away so we decided to go for it. It ended up being a really long walk to the outskirts of town and we missed breakfast, but it was pretty nifty and worth the trip.
We stopped at a bakery on the way back to the hotel and had a brief rest before catching our 12:00 boat ride. Missing a hotel breakfast is no big loss in Italy. Italians eat a multi-course dinner late at night (8-10pm) so they don't eat much of a breakfast, and the hotels reflect this. You usually get cold meats and cheeses, a hard roll or croissant, and some cereal and yogurt. Not bad and entirely adequate, but not exciting either. This basic "Continental" selection is similar in France, but the quality of the bread and croissants is usually much better! The croissants at our current hotel in Lucera are actually inedible, which seems hard to do.
More Lake Como
On the first part of our boat ride we kept our eyes peeled for George Clooney's house. We had a general idea of where it was, but didn't really know what to look for. David finally asked the young deckhand about it - alas, we had passed it already. But we ended up boarding the same boat after our stop in Bellagio, and the same guy recognized David and said "I show you George!" He even promised to have the captain drive closer to the shore so we could get a better look.
George's house is pretty close to Como so we had a long wait, but after an hour or so the captain did indeed go closer to the shore and blew his horn to get our attention. We looked up into the cabin and about five people, including the captain, were pointing to the shore and nodding enthusiastically. The young guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, "white one!" Good times.
So here it is, George Clooney's villa on Lake Como:
I believe this appeared in one of the Ocean's movies, but can't remember which one. Unfortunately George isn't home right now (my regular academic research on People.com indicates he's in the USA promoting his new movie), or we might have driven back to ask him out for espresso.
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