Tales of our Travels: Fri/Sat September 16 & 17, 2011

What a beautiful place! Bellagio is situated at the tip of the peninsula that juts into the middle of Lake Como. It's a lovely old town with steep narrow streets, a lakeside piazza and beautiful gardens. Our hotel, The Hotel Florence, is at the lakeside - the views are stunning. This is a photo of the hotel and the view from our room.

After arriving we had a leisurely lunch lakeside and began to explore the town - lot of tiny artisinal shops and much climbing of steep steps. Here are a couple of pics.

Here I am quite delighted exiting a glass shop - I found a glass Christmas tree decoration.

Above are more pics from around the town. Later we headed to Albergo Silvio for dinner which has a spectacular view of the lake. We dined on burratto cheese with eggplant and tomatoes. Burratto cheese is a very soft cheese (almost liquid) from Sicily. Followed that with fish caught that day in Lake Como. Dessert was pistachio cream semi freddo with raspberry sauce and chocolate mousse. Have to say that every dinner has been excellent . It pays to research www.chowhound.com for restaurant recommendations before any trip!

Lake Como has several villas situated around it - most were built from the 17th to 18th centuries when the wealthy would spend their summers here. The most famous is Villa Carlotta. It's filled with romantic paintings and sculptures by Canova but the gardens are the big attraction - an amazing collection of exotic plants - azaleas, cacti, bamboos, palms and much more. Here are some pics. We took a ferry from Bellagio to Tremezzo where the villa is located.

After the villa visit we returned to Bellagio and took a guided tour of Villa Serbelloni perched high above Bellagio and now owned by the Rockefeller Foundation who use it as a think tank for child related issues in the Third World. The views are amazing from the villa - here are some pics.