If you are one of the less fortunate people who has to work during summer in an overheated and sticky office, then a little break from your daily routine may just work wonders for you.While falling asleep in front of my desktop I decided to do a road trip to northern Italy. To be precise to the famous lake of Como – what else? Usually I would select a town or city by its reputation and culinary, shopping and nightlife offering (as you can see “cultural” was left out on purpose), but this time the only criteria was to get away. So we ended up in beautiful Bellagio.
The preparation was fairly simple: call a few friends, organize two cars and book a cheap stay through Airbnb for two nights. Everything else would fall into place by itself I figured and when you have no plan at all, there is nothing to stick to anyway.
The trickiest part when heading south by car in summer is to cross the Gotthard tunnel. At 6am there was already a traffic jam of 14km with an expected waiting time of 3 hours. So, if you do not want to spend your weekend inside your car you may want to drive uphill and go over instead of through the mountain. You will be rewarded with some great views.
Our first goal was to find a nice place for a swim in the lake and finally catch some rays of sun. By chance we ended up in a small town called Lenno, to be more precise at the Lido di Lenno. A hidden private beach; sorry spiaggia, with a stylish Restaurant and a well-sorted Bar.
By sunset head to the ferry and cross the lake towards Bellagio for a quick shower and a proper dinner. Stroll through the narrow alleys and soak in the unique atmosphere. Although it is only an hour from the border it feels so far away from home.
Whoever said to take the weather with you no matter where you go surely wasn’t living in Switzerland. Because we woke up with rain on Saturday we were forced to come up with a plan B. In our case plan M for Milan. Could be worse but personally I would have preferred renting a boat and stalking George.
To make up for it we decided to have dinner at Ristorante Salice Blu in Bellagio where we enjoyed a variety of excellent plates prepared by chef Luigi Gandola and his team.
The downside to a short trip is clearly the word “short”. Time flies when you are not working but usually you will feel like you have been away for longer than 2 nights due to all the impressions and memories that will carry you through the next few working weeks. But you have still another 8 to 10 hours ahead to enjoy yourself before heading home. An idea could be to spend the day at the Lido of Bellagio, which is clearly a party location during weekends, but rather calm during daytime. The advantage of the Lido are that you can rent a boat on the spot on hourly basis and it doesn’t require any experience nor license (I think the same applies actually for driving cars given the near death experiences we had on the narrow roads)…Ship ahoy!
Routail 