Day 12 - Lake Como

OMG! had a 7:30am wake up call! That is considered a sleep in when on tour. And what better way to wake up than to a view like this?

View from our balcony

We're practically acting human again after the extra sleep we got, but it still doesn't stop us passing out the minute we get onto the bus. Probably a good thing since its a 2hour ride from our hotel to Lake Como, the optional excursion for the day. Half way to Lake Como, we get woken up by Camera Susan and Maria having a laughing fit, and somewhere along the lines, Camera Susan ended up on the floor on the bus. Its still too early for me to care.

Camera Susan on the floor

As we get closer and closer to Lake Como, the view just gets more and more stunning.

Taken from the bus window

The anticipation was killing us! Everyone was so excited to go to Lake Como, except for one little problem. The bus got stuck. Some van 2 spaces infront of us had broken down, and basically blocked traffic for a good 20mins before we could get past. Thank god Umberto is an excellent driver.

Look how close that truck is!!

We finally make it through the jam and get dropped off at the wharf. My god is Lake Como breath taking! And we haven't even started our cruise yet!!




We took a cruise around Lake Como, looking at the gorgeous Villas built around the water. One of them cost 18million euros! Holy cow! (Oh, and thats not George Clooney's Villa either!)

Taking a dip in the lake

Possibly the most beautiful house in Italy

Somewhere along the line, Good Old and Ron asked me to take a photo of them with their camera. As I did the auto focus thing on their camera, it froze. You couldn't turn it off, you couldn't zoom. We ended up ripping the battery out as a "reboot". Luckily all the photos were there!!

The boat dropped us of at Bellagio, which is a little island in the middle of Lake Como giving you a 360 degree view. This little island is absolutely gorgeous! Lots of steps, but so gorgeous! Its got such a great Italian feel.




We stopped off at a pizzeria for some coffee, stupidly enough, we had the coffee THEN decided to sit down for lunch. Oh wells, we ended up having more Chianti wine with our Pizza. The base itself was delicious, but for some strange reason, they ended up giving me pickled mushrooms that I ended up picking off.

Free snacks at the bar

Wine!

Margherita pizza

Prosciutto and Mushroom pizza

Half way through the meal, half of the tour group showed up to eat lunch there as well. Our peaceful lunch was interrupted by the hyenia cackle of Maria. At the same time, the 81y.o couple walked by. I was staying to Moishi that any minute I'm going to lunge over at them with my knife. He thought I wanted to stab the 81y.o. when I was referring to the headache of a laughter from Maria! This of course, started a laughing fit, that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the wine we had.....

After we were done eating (it was actually because we were disgusted that a chick walked in with a split going up all the way to her crotch), we walked around some more to take photos before it was time to head back to the meeting point. I stopped by a shop and bought a famous Bellagio Silk Tie for my daddy as a present. And as we were leaving that shop, we suddenly spotted Good Old in a shop. Without a word said between the two of us, we lunged into the shop. Within minutes, we had convinced her to buy a 50euro silk scarf. But we honestly thought it was a gorgeous scarf. If it wasn't so expensive, and the fact that I don't wear scarfs like that, I would've bought it myself.

Suddenly Good Old told us that she's spending all that money on a scarf for herself to keep her hubby happy. Apparently he was really happy that she bought that scarf and spent all that money. But then they did spend their time on Bellagio wining and dining with seafood, whilst us poor peasants ate pizza.

We hop back onto the boat for a last cruise around Lake Como before we jump back onto the bus back to the hotel.

Once we got to the hotel, I dumped my stuff, jumped into my cozzies and ran off to the beach with a book. Ahhhhh this is the life. I mean, who wouldn't love to relax to a view like this??



As the sun moved, it got a bit chilly at the beach. I grabbed my stuff and went off to the pool area instead, where I saw Big and little Tits going off their face at a Californian blond boy. Ugh, all the flirting just makes me ill. Plus I had had too much sun by then. I packed up all my stuff and ran back to the room for my DSLR where I walked around the hotel grounds for more photos before heading back to dinner.



I decided to go back to the hotel for a quick shower. And as I'm walking towards the door, I can see Good Old standing outside our door shivering like a puppy caught in the rain. Suddenly, housekeeping came running up with a key screaming Italian. Apparently Good Old had gone for dip in the spa and sauna whilst Ron went to get a massage. And after her spa, she decided to just throw her dry clothes on without her wet swim suit underneath. Meaning she was going 100% commando and hoping to sneak back into the room with her towel. However, she forgot that Ron had the key, so she was locked out. She then had to run to reception in her see through white top to ask house keeping to let her in. But housekeeping rocked up with the wrong key and had to go back to get another key. This is when I had rocked up. She was hoping that I was in and would let her climb over our balcony, but I think her balcony door was locked anyway. So after housekeeping had unlocked the door and left, we ended up standing in the hall way just chatting. Yes I know she's half naked, but it didn't stop us chatting. Suddenly Ron rocks up and asked us why the hell are we talking in the corridoor. I decided to let her explain what was happening and went inside.

I get back to the room and have a quick shower and hung up all my laundry on the balcony where I had put up my travel laundry rope. Suddenly, Clawfeet and Colgate came out to hang their laundry up on their laundry line. Then Good Old came out and saw that people on both sides of her had laundry lines, and she had never seen anything like that before. She went to grab her camera to take photos of our laundry.....like wtf? I ran inside and told Moishii (who had finally rocked up again), when decided he needed to take photos of their laundry, which was just draped over the chairs and tables.

Again, we had dinner was with Will and Diane, which we didn't mind because we truely loved talking to them. Dinner, was again delicious!!!

Entree - Baked Pasta

Huntsmen's Chicken, Potatoes and Zucchini

Fruit Salad

We decided to take a nice stroll after dinner to work off all the food when we bumped into Good Old and Ron in the lobby.

Hotel Lobby

Ron proceeded to tell us how he just had the best massage and he went and tipped the massues 20euros, then they had a big fight there the masseus didn't want to take that much tip even though he insisted. Suddenly the 2 of them got into this argument as to how old the masseus is when the clouds of thunder rolled across Good Old's face.

Luckily, that storm quickly passed when Good Old decided to tell us about her spa experience, which was a fake Italian Turkish bath. Yes, I did just say that. But anyway, she said she went and sat in the spa for about 20mins, when another couple walked in and did something, and suddenly there were bubbles in the spa! Basically, she had sat in the spa bath for 20mins, without actually turning the jet stream on.....

Whilst we were laughing about this, Ron decided to break it to us that he challenged the Californian blonde kid to a game of Ping Pong. But he told the kid that he had to ask his wife for permission first. Well, Good Old didn't believe him, and suddenly the clouds of thunder were back again. We decided to make a hasty retreat and let the 2 of them sort it out.

We went back to our rooms to finish our packing since we had a 6am wake up call tomorrow. Of course, a night isn't complete without more wine (even though it was leftover wine) and a laughing fit. When we had finally finished packing, it was bed time. I needed a really good night's sleep if I was to get up at 6am, which is probably why I cracked my head on the bed head. It wasn't a clumsy drunken accident....it was sub-conciously deliberate....