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Viva la Villa



We are home from our trip now so I am catching up on all our adventures.  We joined our tour group in Varenna, Italy on Lake Como and once the tour started, I had no time to blog plus internet at hotels was pretty slow.  We were on a Rick Steves Tour - a local Seattle guy - who has been doing European tours for 40 years now and has become very popular, to say the least.  We'd been planning this trip since November and we were READY!  
We even took classes at Rick Steves' Travel Expo to learn first hand from Mr. Expert, himself

and I learned how to pack light, my biggest challenge.


We bought travel supplies at his store 

and we were ready to go.  And to tell you the truth, everything went just as planned and worked out just like he said it would.  Bruce and I have a whole new outlook on traveling now.  Remember that big, old suitcase we took with us to Japan for 2 weeks?  No more.
Now, it's one carry-on bag and a day pack, period.  And it worked perfectly, just like Rick said it would.  No big deal if I'm wearing the same clothes in all the photos...once the tour started, we had our laundry done one time in Cinque Terre where the hotel only charged $15 for a bag of laundry.  There was no time to go to a laundromat on this tour since we were doing activities constantly.  So much to do, so much to see!  

We were on The Best of Italy Tour and we didn't miss a thing.  Lake Como was a perfect place to start the tour because it was so peaceful, calming and beautiful.  


 We met our tour group guide and all the other members of the tour group here. Our guide took photos of all of us and gave us copies with our names under our photo to help us learn everyone's names.  


There were a total of 24 people in our tour group, plus our bus driver, Riccardo 


and our guide, Anna.  

We got to know one another very well in the next unforgettable 17 days ahead.

We stayed two nights at each stop on our itinerary which is why we were so busy every minute.  At each stop, we had lots of free time to do whatever we wanted after we had an orientation and we often had a local tour of the town and entrances into museums and popular tourists attractions.  At Lake Como, Bruce and I opted to take a boat ride around the lake and get off at two locations.  Our tour provided us with boat tickets and we could go where ever we wanted with them.  (a hop-on, hop-off type deal)


It started off rainy but the sun came out as the day wore on.  


You can see that we were a little wet but it wasn't cold at all but rather hot in Varenna while we were there. 


We got off at Lenno which was the last stop because we wanted to see the villa on the lake where they filmed the James Bond Movie, Casino Royale.

Remember the scene where he was recovering at a hospital or rehab.-type center?
Well, that was the famous Villa del Balbianello. (They also shot a scene here in the Star Wars: Episode II movie)









We toured the inside and outside of the villa which was built in late 1700's.  The library has over 4,000 books, mostly on geography and travel from the last owner of the villa, Guido Monzino, who was a prominent Milanese businessman.


He was also an adventurer who went to the North Pole in 1971 and was the first Italian to climb Mount Everest in 1973.


He turned the villa into a private museum where he collected and catalogued all his travel memoirs, art pieces and souvenirs of his travels and expeditions.



He died in 1988 and left the villa as a museum with all of his collections. It has one of the most extensive collections of maps and a rare collection of old prints of Lake Como. 
After we left the villa, we took the boat to Bellagio for lunch.  


Bellagio had lots of shops and restaurants so we had no problem finding a nice outdoor cafe for lunch for, what else....but our favorite - pizza!
I also had the popular Italian drink, Spritz, which was the first of many on this trip.

It is made with prosecco sparkling wine and Aperol liquor (thus the orange color).  It's a refreshing drink in the Italian heat of summer and one of the few drinks I could actually get with ice!  As I mentioned before, water is not an automatic beverage in Italy and ice water basically does not exist.  So, we would always order a bottle of water with a meal, Bruce would usually order wine and since I was mostly dying of thirst all the time, I would order a Spritz.  

I got real good at drinking luke warm tap water out of my water bottle all day but I did miss a big refreshing glass of ice water on these warm days.  One of my favorite caprese dishes was here in Varenna when they served it with pesto, mozzarella, and cherry tomatoes.


 I loved this presentation and the use of pesto instead of plain basil leaves.  I'm sticking this idea in the back of my brain for next summer when caprese season is in full bloom again.  It was good start to our trip in beautiful Lake Como.





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