Once Upon a Time, in Italy

As it has been much publicized, by myself, on this blog, last year I went to Europe with my brother, two sisters, and brother-in-law.  Next week marks one year since this trip of a lifetime began.  I call it a trip of a lifetime because I don’t think it’s that common for 5 adult siblings to all be in the right financial and physical seasons of their lives to actually go on a 3 week trip together.  I think I’ve mentioned before that I bribed my one sister to go by conceding to go to Italy.  Now, I LOVE Italian food, but Italy was not very high on my list.  This is mostly because I’m a millennial and don’t like to do things that everyone else has done and if my Facebook feed was any indication, the whole world has already been to Italy.  But I agreed to go anyways, for my sister.  It went about as expected with a few surprises along the way.  In honor of the one year anniversary of this trip I’m going to attempt to tell the story of Italy thoroughly, in a series of stories rather than one long post.  Think of it as a literary podcast.

Here we go.

The story starts at the literal border of Italy and Switzerland since we entered by land and not air (or boat).  Our first stop was Lake Como.  We were here for a whopping 15 minutes or so I believe so it’s not really fair to say we’ve ‘been’ but it was en route from Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland to Venice, Italy so we made time for it.

Now, to be fair, we would have stayed much longer but those clouds held a storm and chased us off.

What those 15 minutes did allow for was beautiful views and a short walk.

Villa Olmo on Lake Como- under construction so I used my camera angle to crop out the fence.

What is this area called?  A man-made bay?

My brother, a natural hero.

My siblings enjoying a brief lake view before I chased them back to the car.

Lake Como

And that was it.  I chased my siblings back to the car as the raindrops started to fall.  We didn’t even find a bathroom, which I remember looking for.

All in all, minimal tourists (perhaps because of the incoming storm?) and beautiful views.  I rated this stop 5 stars out of 5 for worth stopping if you are in the area.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Venice, which I mostly didn’t like except for maybe 3 parts.  You’ll see.

 

This was country 5 of our 6 country Euro Trip.  To read a summary of the trip, click here.

Country 2: Austria, read here and here.

Country 4: Switzerland, click here and here.