All Across The Universe...: Lake Como

After leaving the Italian Alps, we headed to the Lake district in the North of Italy. There are about 5 lakes in this region, and we had decided to stay around Lake Como, as it is the biggest, most well known lake. Lake Como has two main towns - Como and Bellagio, and we stayed in Como. The Como region is best known for its silk industry. Bellagio's second claim to fame is that it's the home of George Clooney's holiday house...

On our first day in Como, we just wandered around the town - good shopping, and heaps of cafes and restaurants all on the lake. Como is home to a beautiful gothic style church, Santa Maria Maggiore, which has its own piazza. We had drinks and dinner here (Steve, this is where we acquired your stein)...

Sharing a drink from Steve's stein in the piazza next to the church

Santa Maria Maggiore (on our last day in Como, we went into this beautiful church and said a prayer and lit a candle for Uncle Jim).

On our second day in Como, we all got a ferry to have a look at the rest of Lake Como... The ferry stopped at all the little towns around the Lake, and we got off at Bellagio for lunch and a good look around (as well as another tiny town we can't remember the name of!). Bellagio was a beautiful little town, with heaps of steep winding lane ways with interesting shops, restaurants, and silk shops... The area surrounding Lake Como, which we saw from the ferry ride, was really nice - really green and hilly, with small scatterings of houses (some of which were huge and really expensive looking!) all the way along.