Luzerne

Bernese Oberland

The French Diversion

Change of Plans

Its been raining quite regularly for the past few days which worked great for our relaxing (and my working) plans; but we didn't really get to see much. 

We did manage to goto Bellagio  (a nice but touristy town), Lugano (a super touristy town) and St. Moritz (the ultra touristy village).

We leave our apartment tomorrow and it is expected to rain over the weekend as well so we have decided to change our original plan. We will now be driving to Nice for a day, then Geneva and then Lauterbrunnen on Monday. Hopefully, avoiding the torrent of rain over the weekend.

Varenna - Italy

We are now in Varenna at Lake Como, a very quaint and picturesque town right across from Bellagio which is the hub of tourist activity.

We are renting an apartment in the historic center for a week; our host Marilena helped us park and then after a thorough lesson in the use of the TV remote control we were promptly abandoned.

Its amazing how much you learn about the culture in just one night. For example, I learnt the secret of the Italian siesta. The church bell wakes you up at 7:00 am with 7 extremely loud bells followed by about a hundred more from the town center bell. The church bell does go off every hour which means that the hours between noon and 3:00pm present the ideal opportunity to catch up on some sleep.

We spent the rest of the day contemplating which flavors of Gelato are worth recommending. Chocolate and Hazelnut are at the top of our list now; we will continue our exploration tomorrow.

Btw, we did visit our local Villas. I can now understand why McCain thinks you need 5M a year to be rich. With that much money you might be able to afford the mortgage, but not the upkeep; which explains why most of them are open to public for a fee.