I'm Only Me When I'm With You

This title has dual meaning: I am both my absolute happiest when Jack is around and free to be anxious about things like ferry location and travel times and train tickets that won't load on my phone because he calms me down and speaks logically to me.

That said, Sunday was Lake Como day! We hopped on a train from Milan Central Station and rode it up to the city of Como, on the south-western tip of the wishbone-shaped lake. We had been hoping for a sunny, windless day so that we could rent a boat and spend the afternoon on the water. Instead, we got rained on all day, with winds that made the waters quite choppy and my hair quite out of control. So instead, we did a bunch of other things, starting with visiting the Como Duomo, extra fun since its name rhymes! Jack's eyes really pop when they're next to the stained glass windows, don't they? I'm not sure why he looks alarmed.

Gelato was our next stop, at a place called the Gelato Laboratory. This stop brought me considerable joy since the employee paused to ask where we were from and was baffled when I said the US. His response: "You are the first foreigner ever to pronounce stracciatella the way it should be pronounced, you speak excellent Italian!" My ego having been stroked, that gelato tasted even sweeter.

We took our gelato for a walk along the lake and passed a mama duck with a bunch of ducklings that don't show up super well in the following picture. The daddy duck was nowhere to be seen, but as Jack helpfully said, "they are ducks, they have bills!" After dying at his dad joke, we went to the cable car that goes from Como to Brunate, an itty bitty little town way up on the mountain. There was an employee wandering around entertaining the people in line for the cable car, and he stopped at us and said to me, "You go up for the view? You have the view right here!" and gestured at Jack. He was right!! The panoramic views were amazing, and even the cloudy haze added to the beauty, but - oops! - I was watching Jack most of the time.

 (cable car path up the center of the photo)

We had lunch at a very well-rated restaurant in Como and did some more wandering before catching the ferry from Como to Bellagio around 5pm. I had intended to get the 3pm ferry, but for unknown reasons, they didn't run that boat last weekend. Confusion. It's okay, because due to that delay we learned that Alessandro Volta is a very important person in Como. Neither of us had ever heard of him, but a quick Google search told us that this Como-born man invented the electric battery and discovered methane! So we took a picture with his statue before we got on the boat that ended up being *ferry* fun, according to Jack.

Bellagio was lovely, although our time there was rather short. We had dinner at La Punta, a restaurant right on the middle tip of the wishbone shape. It had a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains! We ate fish - the catch of the day from the lake - and it was delicious!

We then hopped on a much shorter ferry ride over to Varenna, our last stop for the day since it houses the train station that got us back to Milan later that night. Varenna is also home to the "Passeggiata degli Innamorati," or "Lovers' Pathway," so we obviously had to do that and take a cute heart picture! We snagged the last train back to Milan and got back to the apartments around 11pm, thoroughly exhausted and relieved to have managed the many logistical bits of the travel day!