Italy - Part 1

Upon our return from Anglet, we only stayed long enough in the countryside to get ready to go to Switzerland and Italy... The purpose of the trip, beside visiting, was to get Paul's passport stamped in a non-EU country since his tourist visa is only good for three months at a time.

In Como, Italy

On the very last day before Paul's visa ran out, we got on the TGV from Paris to Geneva. The Swiss, apparently, aren't too worried about foreigners in their country because they quickly checked our passports and that was all.... no stamps!...
This time around I had decided not to take any reservations for any hotels in any cities to give us freedom to change our plans as we went. In Geneva, that turned out to be a bit of a mistake... After checking the two hostels in the city, which were fully booked, we resorted to the tourism office for their help in finding us a hotel in an apparently, fully booked city (there were several conventions that week....).
In the end, they did manage to find us a hotel for one night, just a few minutes before their closing time! And luckily, it wasn't a 5-star hotel!
So it looked like we were only going to stay one night in Geneva. The little that we saw of it was really pleasant; the city was very pretty with a lot of pedestrian lanes and the people generally nice and relaxed. The lake too was really nice: the water, crystal clear!
Anyway, it was clearly a city breathing wealth and lack of worry (probably from not being involved in any international conflicts?...).
The next day we moved on again, in search of a place to sleep at night.... We took the train again, this time in direction of Como, just north of Milan. The train went through the Alpine Mountains and was a really pretty ride through many miles of vineyards in Switzerland, and then pretty italian towns along Lake Maggiore in Italy.

Lake Como

Como is a little town on the border of Lake Como, and has become quite famous lately... of course, I had no clue, as is always the case when it comes to Hollywood gossip, but it is where George Clooney has set up his new home, in a villa on the lake... We did not see him or any other Hollywood stars, but the town is definitely popular and again, we had a bit of a hard time finding a hotel! We ended up spending the three nights we had in Como in three different hotels!

Little village in the Mountains around Como

Como from above

The town itself was very quaint with little paved streets and colorful buildings and flowers at the windows, and the setting was impressive with the lake and the mountains. The people were very stylish at all hours of the day... girls particularly, seemed keen on wearing their stilettos and abundant jewelry all day!... We were definitely not fitting in! :)


We were quite underdressed in Milan as well, which we went to visit for a day. Milan is taking its role as Fashion Capital City of the world (or at least rivaling with Paris for the title) very seriously. Expensive clothing is its specialty, and fake Pradas are also very abundant on the street! The white marble cathedral was impressive, with hundreds of statues on its walls and roof - some of them, depicting tortured saints, interestingly gruesome...

Milan Cathedral

The Sforzesco fortress (of the Sforza familly - who were protectors of Leonardo da Vinci for a long time) was less adorned but really impressive as well.

Castello Sforzesco

The rest of the city though, seemed sort of gloomy and a good layer of black dust covered all buildings except the cathedral... so it was definitely a good idea to stay in Como instead of Milan.


After Como we travelled down to Florence, where we stayed during the rest of our trip....
to be continued...

Modern Italian Art in Milan