We waved goodbye to Provence as we stepped aboard our SNCF train to Lake Como in Italy.

It was a long trip, the longest of our whole time there, about 14 hours all up.  We were so excited that it didn’t seem that long during the journey.  Looking back now I cant really remember if we swapped trains or just kept on the same one, distance has a way of anaesthetising your memory and all the wonders along the way now are just a blur, but a happy blur.  The scenery was so nice I suspect we were mesmerised and time disappeared.

Milan is the capital of fashion but the only fashion we saw was at midnight in the main train station – it was beautiful, a wonder of architecture for a train station.  I had expected to rock up at midnight in a dingy suspect quiet station waiting for our next ride into Lake Como on a smaller line.  Boy was I wrong, it was a large station, as busy as an airport full of hustle and bustle even at that late hour.

2am we wait in line for a taxi that took us up one side of the lake in a winding chicane like way to our hotel.  I shut my eyes on a few of the turns.  Finally we arrived at Lezzeno at our hotel.  The lovely taxi driver, feeling it was his duty to awaken everyone in the middle of the night rang the bell as we rushed up to him shushing him and holding his arm away from the buzzer.  The hotel had arranged for us to collect our keys at the desk and had kept the door open for us.  Silently we went to our rooms, up a few flights of stairs and crashed, half of our bodies wanting to go out and see where we were, the other half too tired to care.  Eventually I fell asleep.

Lake Como was a whistle stop on the way to Venice… it wasn’t going to be on the itinerary at all but I was told by a friend that it was so beautiful that we HAD to stop there.  It was overcast most of the time as it was late spring, almost summer but that didn’t dampen my spirits.

Waiting in the rain for our bus

Lake Como

Lake Como

Bellagio

One day, just one day to see everything so off we went to experience Lake Como – the most beautiful garden in Italy.  Great ferry system took us everywhere we could possibly fit in:  Bellagio, Tremezzo and Varenna.

Villa Carlotta

Looking up at

Villa Carlotta Tremazzo Como

I have to say that Villa Carlotta was a fantastic place to go, its gardens superb and with the backdrop of Lake Como, picture perfect.