Mr. Bill's Wild Ride
It was a White Knuckle Day! You all know the old saying that God laughs when we make plans. Well, today the plan was to drive up to Bellagio, see the town, and take a boat ride all around the lake to see the charming towns from the water.
Well, first thing this morning, Bill got an email from the boat captain saying that our boat trip was canceled for safety reasons as the weather would not be safe on the lake. That was our first clue of what was to come.
We decided we still wanted to see Bellagio, so after our great breakfast, we headed out. When we left the sun was shining and it was a pleasant 68 degrees. The road was long with sharp turns, switch backs, hairpin turns - you name it. It was a narrow roadway going high up in the mountains. Some spots were so narrow it was hard to pass oncoming cars - not to mention trucks or buses. So narrow, Bill had to have the outside mirrors turned in to miss walls and oncoming vehicles. Even one time we had to back up so a large truck could get by us.
Even cars are tight on these narrow roads - and this was a wide spot.
Nice rest stop along the drive.
We encountered some very steep and narrow walkways.
Close to the road but beautiful.
We arrived in Bellagio in one piece - rather 3 pieces = Bill, Karen, and the car. We picked out a parking place and Bill went to work the machine to pay for our time in the lot. He couldn't get the machine to work so tried another machine which also didn't work. He started working with another man with the same problem. Bill and Roman, who was from Lithuania, tried many times before they decided to download an app to pay their parking fees and after about 30 minutes of trying, they got the apps to work and we were in business. It was very helpful to Bill to have Roman help to figure things out.
Thinking that our problems were over we decided to walk around and enjoy to views of the lake and then get a pizza for lunch, which was very good. It started to rain and then it stopped but that was only a taste of what was to come.
Local cemetery across the road from our lunch place.
Bill decided that we should try and find the hotel that Carla booked us in a couple of years ago when we were going to go to Lake Como, but COVID stopped that trip. We followed the directions on our GPS and quickly found ourselves deep deep in the tourist area with all the high end shops along a narrow one way street packed with people and we were trying to drive through the crowd without hitting anyone. Gratefully all the people gradually got our of our way and we slowly got out of that mess without killing a foreign tourist. We eventually found Carla's hotel and decided we were glad it didn't work out with all the people crowding that area. It was a crowed mess with tons of people.
After untangling ourselves out of the Bellagio tourist area, we headed back to Como and our hotel. Before we got very far, it started raining and thunder was heard. At this point we understood why our boat trip was canceled today. It rained and rained and rained even harder and harder and this was when the white knuckles, part 2, kicked in. Thankfully we slowly made it back to Como without incident - Thank The Lord. After getting back to the hotel we decided that we needed some gelato to help recover from our challenging day. The sun appeared again with a shot burst of drizzle that only lasted 15-minutes.
I loved my chocolate Gelato.
After a short rest back at our hotel, it was dinner time. Tonight we ate at il Sociale, a very historic restaurant with fantastic food.
Bill's first glass of wine in a year - well deserved!
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