Bellagio

Traveling up the river on a boat is too slow for us…so Charlie drove us past Tremezzo to the ferry stop at Villa Carlotta and we took the ferry to Bellagio.  This method only took us about an hour.  Our goal was to get to the monthly market before it was too crowded, but we walked all over the town, up alleyways, down alleyways, along narrow streets with cars, and never found the market.  After all of our walking, we decided to eat lunch…it was Noon…thanks to Joan and Morris Hyman, we ate at La Punta.  We had a fabulous lunch with fun waiters and a lovely view of the lake.  I had my favorite dish of the trip so far–spinach and ricotta stuffed ravioli and fresh tomatoes with butter and sage.

After lunch we had to catch the ferry back to Tremezzo since our parking space had a 3-hour limit.  We missed that ferry so we at artisan gelato while we waited for the next one, hoping our car had not been ticketed or towed.

After stopping at a local supermarket, we headed back toward Laglio.  We were stopped at about the town center by a funeral procession down the main road, most of the small village was included in the procession–a soccer team, people following a priest with a microphone chanting, an elaborate hearse and a very distraught family, with the rest of the  village following.   It was not a joyful celebration of life like our Second Lines in New Orleans, but a very sad, somber event.

When we got back to the villa, Allan, Charlie and Clay cooked us an excellent meal.  We shared a couple of bottles of the Amarone from Urio and ate salad, pork chops, asparagus and spaghetti.  The evening sky from our terrace was beautiful and the clouds sat like soft blankets around the mountains. I hope the beauty  is captured in this photo.