| A sample of the city streets in the small town of Bellagio. |
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| Glenn's next Journal - Lake Como (coming soon) |
| Glenn's Lake Como Journals 06-22-02 It's Saturday morning and we have arrived in Paris around 6:00 am.. Our first stop was the metro where we would transfer train stations to catch our next train from Paris to Milano. This train did not leave until 8:00 am so we had some time. We arrived at the Gare de Lyon train station before 7:00 am and had time for some breakfast before heading back out. Breakfast included croissants (plain and with apple) and orange juice. We also bought a couple of sandwhiches for the train ride as the train did not arrive into Milano until 3:00 pm.. After breakfast we found our next via. We got on the train around 7:45 am for an 8:00 am departure. We had seats in the smoking section, as that is all that was available when we made reservations. We were hoping that there would not be too many smokers in this section, or at least near us. The train left prompytly at 8:00 am and away we were. The train ride was uneventful but we did enjoy the beautiful country side of France as we passed by it. We will have to come back some day to travel around France. We did not spend any time in France on this trip. We arrived in Milano around 3:00 pm as scheduled. Our first stop was the partenza board so we could determine when the next train was to Como. Good news!!! The next train is at 3:25 pm so we have a very short wait between trains.(The partenza board listed the train to be 20 minutes behind schedule but a 3:45 pm departure was still not too bad.) That sounded good to us as we were ready to get where we were going and a hot shower sounded good about now. Milan was unbelievably hot (around 35 degrees C - 88 degrees F) and we both quickly came to a sweat. We took the time while waiting for the train to call Dario and provide him with an approximate arrival time and he said that he would be at the train station to pick us up. We also called Erin's mom to congratulate her on her retirement as she had finished her last day of work on Friday (as a school teacher for 36 years). We also confirmed our arrival into LAX on Wendesday night. After the phone calls we went back upstairs to recheck the partenza board for the binario that our train would depart from. We waited a while until we realized that the train would be more than 20 minutes late since it was already 3:45 pm.. All of a sudden the partenza board information whirled around, as it did when it updated all of the information on the board. Sure enough our train was updated to be 50 minutes late now. We went out to binario 13, which is the binario the paper copy of the partenza board listed. We continued our wait there while Erin ran off to call Dario back to let them know we would be late. As we waited the board changed again to say the train would be 1 hour late. When all was said and done we finally left out towards Como 1 1/2 hours late. The train ride was only 40 minutes and sure enough Dario and Paola were waiting for us at the train station. We headed off to there home which was actually in the town of Trevarrio. Their home was absolutely fabulous and was reconstructed by hand from an old farm house. We chatted for a while before we showered up and headed out for the evening. The local area was having a celebration (in honor of a patron saint) that included bands, barbeques, and huge fireworks. The ride took us about 40 minutes and the walk took another 20 minutes or so before we reached the town where the celebration was happening. We sat out on the grass while we ate sausage sandwhiches and cheese while enjoying a bottle of wine. After the fireworks we made our way down towards the water where we listened to a band before calling it a night. We walked back a little ways until we came across Dario's brother, whom we met along with his girlfriend. Dario arranged a ride back to the car for all of us as it was getting on 1:00 am and Erin and I were definitely tired from our last two days of travel. We arrived home around 2:00 am after having slept for most, if not all, of the ride home. We slept soundly!!! |