An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
We woke up around 10am! Must have been all the hard work we’ve been doing back home. . .
Had the usual breakfast, then ferried off to Verenna and the Villa Monestera, an old monestery now a public garden with some villas that were being used for a conference. What a sumptuous garden! Small, but exquisite, running colorfully along the lakeshore for close to a mile. Since we knew a ferry wasn’t until 13:35, we just sat on one of their benches and gazed out on the tranquil lake for a while.
We then walked back and found that we were locked in, as the garden was closed from 12:30 to 14:30! A man was eating lunch in a room off the main entrance area, and he saw us, realized what had happened, and scolded (cursed?) us harshly (in Italian, of course) as he unlocked the door to let us out.
We then ferried to Cadenabbio, with a quick stop at Bellagio, and set off for our lunch restaurant. We found it, it looked great, but they’d stopped serving lunch by that time. We parked at the Villa Carlotta Gardens and walked to the Grand Hotel Tremezzo to try their lunch, but they, too, had stopped serving, except in the bar where we could have gotten a ham and cheese sandwich. We passed, and walked down the street to a different hotel with a nice outdoor dining setup and were told that it was too late, but we could have a . . .Ham and Cheese Sandwich!
Which we did. Not even a very good one, either. The beer was quite good, though, as was the shandy (sp?) which was beer and lemonade. We contemplated begging for the leftover polenta from the next table, but refrained. We did pick up a good hazelnut gelato en route to the gardens. The villa was nice, with some memorable sculptures, and the gardens were an impressive collection of myriad types of trees, flowers and plants.
We didn’t have time to see the Villa Barbienelli today, so we just drove to the boat-launch place for it to scout it out for next time. What crazy driving!! A 1 1/2 lane road, which narrowed to 3/4 at places, with cars and lots of motorcycles passing (!) us and careening toward us constantly. Ferried back to Bellagio and took a short nap before Wendy had a massage and Milton worked out in their quite good gym.
Came back to find out that not only our air conditioning (which we needed since to leave the window open would be too noisy as our room is over the hotel entrance), but everyone’s, was turned off because “it’s nice outside”. When we tried to explain that we needed it because our room was really noisy, Stefania in Reception told us “Oh, it won’t be that noisy”. Don’t know which customer service manual she got that from. We left a letter for the owner, since she claimed that that was who makes these decisions, and we haven’t heard anything yet.
We did, however, enjoy a delicious dinner en suite. Cream of spinach soup (a bit too watery), a green salad, many grilled vegetables, fabulous pumpkin ravioli, and spaghetti w/clams in a red sauce similar to yesterday’s. As we read, we were serenaded through our window by a rockin’ old-time big band playing for all the dancing senior citizens on tour here.