Como, Firenze, and Roma

Against my better judgment, I rented a car and O and I set off for Lake Como. I’m not sure why, but I have always seen pictures of the area and been fascinated with the idea of visiting. It’s so beautiful, the palatial villas and small towns around this beautiful body of water and set against a dramatic back drop of tall and gorgeous mountains.

Driving in and around Milan was hell on earth. It’s a very confusing city, small roads, motorbikes, scooters, all driving around with reckless abandon and ignoring most road signs and signals. Once we got on a freeway and left Milan though, things improved. Como is only about 40 kilometers away from Milan and it is the largest town at the southern tip of Lake Como. It’s a charming town with a beautiful cathedral. I had made hotel reservations at a smaller town named Bellagio further up the lake. It’s about 25 kilometers from Como to Bellagio, but this is on a two-lane road that stretches the idea of two lanes. In theory, throughout most of the road, there is room enough for two cars to pass each other traveling in opposite directions. In reality, yeah, not happening. It reminded me a lot of the crazy roads in rural Japan where they post mirrors around blind curves, so you can see who is coming from the opposite direction. There’s a little of that here, but in general, the road is a lot of blind curves and locals walking with their daily shopping or riding their scooters or bicycles in the road oblivious of traffic around them. The posted speed on most of the road is about 40 kilometers an hour or about 30 miles per hour. Locals drive the road at about 60-80 miles per hour. It’s complete insanity.

We reached Bellagio and settled in for a quiet two days. Ferries crisscross the lake all day and take locals, tourists, and their vehicles from small town to small town. We took a ferry from our Bellagio to another smaller village named Varenna and spent a quiet sunny afternoon drinking and reading at a beautiful café overlooking the pristine lake. I consumed multiple cappuccinos and my boyfriend consumed multiple Sex on the Beaches. We had a great couple of days exploring our small towns and enjoying each other.

Thursday morning, we packed up and headed back to Milan. Everything went great until we got back to the city limits of Milan and then proceeded to get lost for 2 hours. It is a total nightmare driving around Italian cities. We finally made it back to the rental car place in one piece with no damage to the car. I gratefully handed back the keys and headed to the station for our train to Florence.

We arrived in Florence several hours later. Several of my friends had extolled the virtues of Florence to me. I’m not sure that anyone mentioned what a zoo the friggin’ city is. I’m not the biggest art connoisseur there is, so I wasn’t expecting to be as excited about the city as some are. We stayed in a lovely pensione near the Duomo in a terrific location. A beautiful and hospitable woman named Tina ran it, but it was not exactly what I had planned on. There was a 1 AM curfew, so we had to always be back before she goes to bed. Kind of an interesting setup. Still, it was very clean and it was kind of like staying back home with your Mom. The city itself drove me insane. You can’t just walk from point A to point B. Streets change names two or three times in as many blocks. I constantly was getting lost and I hate the feeling of not being able to find my way around. The other issue with Florence was the tourists. The city is teeming with them! They are everywhere and there is no escaping them. In the district where we stayed, the prices on food items and basic goods were two to three times higher than anywhere else we had seen elsewhere in Europe. O and I walked around the city and took loads of photos. We also kept up our gelato sampling. We’ve been eating gelato twice a day. It is so good. The best I’ve had thus far has been in Milan while we were shopping one day. O liked one of the first places we ever tried near the Duomo in Milan. That being said, of the fifteen different kinds of gelato we’ve sampled, only one place we didn’t really care for. The rest have been pretty close to heaven on earth. We didn’t end up doing too much in the way of sightseeing in Florence. We walked around town and caught some of the churches and piazzas. Still, after you spend a bunch of time in Italy, you tend to get a bit churched and statued out. They are everywhere.

We spent two days in Florence and I was more than ready to get out of there. On Saturday, we caught our last 2-hour train ride to Rome to complete our trip. We club hopped a bit the first night we arrived here and tried out some of the different gay clubs in Rome. None of them were that great, but it was nice to get out and see what’s out there. O wanted to stay out all night, but I wanted to get the most out of our 3 days here. So we got home at 3 AM and hit the sack. The next day, I woke up and looked at my watch. 12:30 PM! We had closed the blinds in our room and when we woke, the room was still completely dark. So we rallied and headed out for an activity filled day. We headed over to the Coliseum area and toured the ruins of the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum. It’s really amazing to see everything in person. We also caught the Piazza Venezia and the Emanuele II monument, very impressive with gorgeous views of Rome. After this, we walked over and had a nice dinner in the Trastevere area on the other side of the Tiber River. I like Rome a lot. It’s much easier to navigate around and is more my kind of town. It’s very urban and has a very international feel to it. You also see a lot of homeless people and it’s not as clean as other European cities like Zurich. It reminds me of New York back in the 80s or 90s. There are a lot of drunken homeless people sleeping around the train stations here. I’m more used to it. O is not such a fan.

O and I watched a movie and then he headed out for another night with the boys. I, on the other hand, feet killing me, opted to stay home.

The next morning, my birthday, I got up early and headed for the Vatican museums. O had gotten home quite late (or early, depending on your version), so he opted to sleep in. (The owner of our hotel in Rome kept saying, “You have to be at the Vatican by 7am.” Yeah, that wasn’t happening.) I arrived at 10 AM and found an extremely long line (over 2 hours). I managed to join a tour group and cut some time off the line. Still, it took me over an hour to get into the museums. I was lucky to have an excellent tour guide who was from Arizona and very informative about the Vatican and the artwork contained within. Vatican City is an enormous museum and one could spend weeks there. I spent a little over 2 hours on the tour there and then continued over to St. Peter’s Basilica, which is amazing. The really fun part, to be honest, was the different nuns and priests all over. All different robes, collars, colors, races, and origins. It’s a very interesting operation and I look forward to coming back one day to see more. The museums were among the best in the world. I was most taken by the sculptures and the frescoes, which line the ceilings of the former palaces of the popes. I’m really not a huge art fan, but these museums must be seen to be believed.

I spent the better part of the day at the Vatican and headed back to the hotel. O met me shortly after my arrival and we planned my birthday dinner. I was attempting to find someplace romantic and quaint, but was having a hard time. Our hotel owners were divided on where to send us, but in the end, recommended a restaurant near Piazza Navona which is lovely. The restaurant did not end up being quaint, but they did have excellent food and we had a nice birthday dinner. After, we were determined to locate the two reputed “best gelato joints in town” before we left Rome. We arrived at the first and found over 100 flavors of gelato. I had limoncello and sour green apple which turned out to be amazing, truly some of the best we’ve had. We then stumbled over to the second gelateria which O proclaimed his favorite limon gelato in all of Italy. We walked a block over and closed out the night at the beautiful Trevi Fountain. I had a wonderful birthday with my sweet boyfriend.

This morning, we packed up and began the long trek home. We fly to London tonight and then home to San Francisco manana. Both of us are looking forward to less chaotic roads, Jamba Juice, our own bed, my Mini Cooper, and Thai food. We have had a wonderful two weeks here, but there is truly no place like home.

Looking forward to seeing and catching up with you all soon. Due to the lack of WiFi hotspots over here, my posts are pictureless for now. I promise to rectify that when I get home to a decent DSL line.

Cuidate.