springtime in Paris

When I was much younger, in travel, I never worried much about anything. I planned overnights in advance (I wasn't as free spirited as some of you are!) and assumed I would somehow get to them. Without the internet, I could not look at local train departure times, though I did become friends with a travel agent who had the train bible: the German edition of European train schedules, updated every half year. Still, there was only so much I could hound him. Typically I made decisions as I moved along. Rarely did I get stuck somewhere without a way to get to my final destinations. Well,  except famously twice, with my sister, on the same trip: in the middle of the night in Turkey and in the middle of nowhere in Sicily. I was the one who had planned the trip and she was a good sport about my oversights. We begged rides and we got them.

These days, there is a heck of a lot of information online and so I coordinate travel in advance. It does save time and worry. Except when it doesn't. It turns out that you can still make mistakes, delays are always possible (and in some countries probable), strikes can wipe out needed connections.

So what are you gonna do, stay home? You roll with it. Despite it all, I have never had to sleep in the gutter overnight. (Ed has done it, but in his case it was by choice.)

*     *     *

Today is a half day of travel. It should be fairly easy. I wake up after a good night's sleep. Yes, really! A full seven hours of it! It's a beautiful day again. I look outside and see... Whiskers?? They have Maine Coons here, in Italy??






I go down to breakfast. I start in on the sidekick plate of Italian goodies, including their ubiquitous croissant with creme patisserie.





Do I want an avocado toast with bread again? Well, okay, though I have to leave in twenty minutes.
Okay, no problem.

You should always exaggerate time for the Italians. Unfortunately, I only exaggerated by five minutes. I love the staff of this B&B, but they are not ones to be rushed. After a nearly twenty minute wait, I excuse myself.
Oh, but here it is!
I take a bite, confirm the credit card payment and once again ask for assurance that the station on my train ticket is the same she points to on the map. (I move through a travel day confirming this, confirming that...)
But the name is different! 
Don't worry, it's the same. 

I leave, with no time to spare.

(In case you ever want to find the incredibly beautiful, hospitable, artsy-funky and totally hidden Palazzo Albricci Pelegrini in Como -- this is the entrance. No sign, no indication of what lies within.)






I walk very very briskly (there's always time for a photo, no?)...






Admiring the primroses once more, though these are potted.






And I turn to the station and it is the correct one! Though unfortunately, it's up a long flight of stairs.

All this to say I get on the train with only one minute to spare.

I exhale and watch the typical Italian countryside whizz by outside the window.






It's true that I still may have made my flight had I missed the train. But it would have required combining, spinning around other connections, possibly spending money.  It's a reminder that in travel, you really cannot count on a smooth transition from point A to point B. I remember when my son-in-law wondered why we got to the Paris airport so very, very early on our last trip there together. Because! With kids, you have to put up with boring waits in order to avoid to the best of your ability anxious runs.

*     *     *

If I imagined myself to be a mountain goat last time we flew over the Alps, this time I felt like a proper chamois -- we were that close to the rocky summits. (I would guess this is because the Alps come so quickly after take off from Milan.)




I'm sure that's the Matterhorn, with it's pronounced peak. Italy to the south, Switzerland to the north.




It was one of those highly uneventful flights. The tricky part was the ever unpredictable Paris airport. We were, upon arrival, redirected to passport control, where we waited a good half hour. Perhaps longer. This was especially irritating to people who hop back and forth between Paris and Milan with some frequency. Both Italy and France are Schengen countries and so people are used to having had these protocols be a thing of the past. Still, immigration issues and terrorism concerns occasionally close some borders between some countries within the EU. It's as if someone threw a fence right in front of a herd of sheep used to moving at a trot through the fields. 

The populace was not happy.

The airport staff did not exactly pull off a smooth process and tempers were thus inflamed on both sides. "Take it up with the Minister of the Interior!" "Just wait until Brexit, if you want to see real delays!" "France does not like Italy!" -- all were heard, all were expressed with some passion.

Followed by laughter. You have to hand it to the French -- oftentimes, after the hiss of steam comes the laughter.


*     *     *

I cannot recall a time when, upon alighting from the commuter train station in Paris, right there in front of the gate to the Luxembourg Gardens, I would not sport a smile! In March, there are always some signs of spring in this city, but this year, after an especially mild winter, spring has really sprung. I am just delighted!

I cut through the park, suitcase and all.






It's thrilling to see this burst of rhapsodic color! Green grasses, sprouted buds, flowers -- this is what awaits us all! And I have this preview, and the weather is just fine. It's a good time to be in Paris.






At my beloved little hotel, I am offered a room with a balcony. I doubt that one can do much of anything there right now (hence the room's availability, I'm sure), but still, the possibility is enchanting.

(View from balcony)






(View from bed)





In the evening, I'd booked a dinner at Cucina Mutualite. Yes, it's a funny choice, coming as I am from Italy. But, when I made the booking I was looking for something close (its a 13 minute walk), reliably good, and not too fussy. Cucina gets a check mark on all counts. Yes, it's a repeat for me, but I will try a new place tomorrow. I promise!

In the mean time, I love my pasta, my fish, and I admit it -- my negroni cocktail to start the whole meal.

I walk back with a bounce. No one loves the season that begins today more than I do. No one.

Happy, happy spring! (And to friends from down under -- just six more months to go! It's worth waiting for.)

the lake the lake the lake

I wake up to a beautiful day!

I could complain that the night hadn't enough sleep in it. It was the fault of an absence of an email (from my mother) and additionally -- a pop up of a troubling email from a financial institutions (signaling that someone had tried to hack into an account of mine). Trying to resolve these took a chunk out of the night hours, but honestly -- when I woke up to that sky and the still air (yesterday's wind is history!), I forgot all about the lost sleep. Issues were resolved. I set out with a clean slate and with an itinerary of only the most pleasant stuff to fill my day!

(View out one of my three windows)






The B&B where I am staying (I was wrong to call it a hotel -- it has only a few rooms and interaction with guests is certainly a priority should you need advice and help) -- it takes breakfast seriously.

Here is the breakfast table (which is actually made of doors, of the kind you see in Como and any number of Italian towns, like for example the one below)...











(In the summer, you can eat breakfast or sip a pre-dinner aperitif outside, at one of these tables...)






The hosts have the usual cheeses, salumis, breads, cakes, fruits, yogurts all on display for you, but in addition, they mix you up veggie coctails and fruit drinks and infused waters and, too, they make a warm main dish -- today's was avocado toast with a poached egg.





This immediately takes away the problem of where and when to eat lunch. A full meal in the morning will hold me 'til dinner.

And now I have a day of exploring before me. So... what do you do if you find yourself at the tip of Lake Como? The answer is -- it very much depends on the time of the year.

With the help of my hosts, I've identified several villages I'd like to get close to. You hop on the ferry and get off when you want to.

But, I'm here in the off season. The ferries run in the morning and in the evening for people who rely on them to get to work/school/stores. In the day -- not so much. Maybe two runs to the more distant places and that's it. And so I have to wait quite a bit to catch my ferry and then coordinate my hop off - hop on schedule with their very limited service.

Hey, but what a pleasure it is to be here in the off season! I can imagine that with crowds and a relentlessly warm sun, things can get pretty stressful in midsummer. Not today.

As for the ferry wait -- there's plenty to do in Como in the interim. With the old city mostly closed off to traffic, walking is magnificent!






And the sun-splashed colors -- sublime!





I visit the Duomo. I take no photos because honestly, you have to be really impassioned about very old churches to enjoy someone else's snapshots of cathedral interiors.

And then I walk some more. It's a chance for me to really get the grid of the city down pat. No more getting lost!

(Meet a native of Como, Alessandro Volta. Whaaat? You don't know who that is? Think electric batteries! He invented the first one some two hundred years ago.)





Oftentimes, long walks in new places give me a chance to get at least a glimpse of what it's like to live there. I see people. I can watch, listen. But Como is tricky that way: you can't assume that even the Italian speaking people are locals. They could be Italian tourists. Como, after all, is just a short skip away from Milan. It is very much a tourist destination.

In many ways, the town is positioned at the least attractive point of the lake. Like the other regional bodies of water in northern Italy, Lake Como is long and skinny (about 30 miles in length and never more than a couple of miles across). Como is at the base and you really have to round the first corner to see pretty much anything of interest. Otherwise, standing at the town's waterfront, all you see is this:





Nice enough, but you need to go around many a bend to look at something that is more than just "nice."

Like for example this...






... and even further north -- this... (Lake Como is quite close to the Alpine peaks. When they appear, your jaw drops.)





I only take the ferry halfway up the lake -- first to Lenno, then to Varenna -- but in that stretch, I see such enormous beauty, that I just cannot take my finger off of the camera's shutter release. The light itself is dazzling and it has an enormous impact on how you view the mountains, the villages, the water. Shadows move across the hills and peaks, houses fade in and out of your field of vision -- it's all rather magical!

I get off at the village of Lenno, because I know there is a pretty park, with a villa that is open to the public. Here, you can see them from the boat.





When I disembark, I realize that these wee towns have very little in common with Como. They are tranquil. Restful. Quiet.

I'm one of the few who gets off at Lenno, and as I try to find my bearings, I come across the path to the Villa. It's an easy half hour walk. Easy, but so very beautiful! And guess what?! The wild primroses are blooming their heads off!






After the city rush of Cuomo, Lenno feels decidedly closer to sane. And the views are all yours, at every step.

(Well, they also belong to the statues that gaze out at the lake 24/7)






(Looking south...)






(Looking north...)






My next pause is in Varenna. But before the boat pulls in there, it makes a stop at Bellagio. This is where the hoards get off (and later -- get on), this little town, made perhaps crazy famous when Las Vegas put up its own glitzy version of this Italian wee gem.






I turn away from Bellagio and face the colorful houses of Varenna.






But, the boat schedule being what it is, I don't have much time to take lengthy walks here. I take a lakefront stroll, buy myself an ice cream cone...











...  and retreat back to the  boat landing for the trip home.

 



The boat pulls into Como just at the aperitif hour. I meander home, stopping at some kids clothes stores, smiling to myself as I marvel at how quickly they're all growing. Primrose is catching up to her big cousin! Or at least it feels that way, as I buy each girl the same sweater, only a few sizes apart.






It is my last evening in Italy and I would have liked to have gone back for that Americano aperitif at the bar I popped into yesterday, but honestly, I am tired. I settle in to do some photo work in my hotel room. Never fear! The hosts make excellent cocktails here as well! This one is with berries and juices and it is delivered to my room with  a tray of cheeses and snacks. Heaven.





For dinner, my hosts recommend Crianza -- a restaurant outside the ancient city walls, but still a mere ten - fifteen minute walk from where I am staying. It serves food from the Puglia region and that's just such a treat for me. Ed and I had visited that southern area some time ago and I have quite the strong memories of our time there.

Food in Italy is completely dictated by regional preferences and traditions. Yesterday's Tuscan fare had little in common with today's Puglian foods. I wont say one is better than the other, but I will admit to liking Crianza even more than yesterday's da Rino.

For one thing, it is a better run operation. If yesterday's meal took three hours, today's took 1.5. That's just about perfect for a solo diner. Three is too long. One is too short. The pace of tonight's dinner was as good as it gets.

And, the room was packed. It was the first time since I've come to Como where I felt sure that all the people in the room were locals. 

Not least of all --  the food was fabulous: the kind of stuff that has touches of imagination and creativity (a panna cotta over lime jelly and with salted crispy capers for dessert!), but, too, does the basics perfectly. My seafoods were just dusted with breadcrumbs before being fried. The effect was so light and airy that you needed nothing more but a squeeze of lemon over the dish to make it perfect.

I walk home full. And I don't get lost! Or at least I know how to recover quickly when I take a wrong turn. (The streets are narrow and dimly lit. Here's a dad walking home late with his daughter, who is on a scooter -- all a shadowy blur, barely visible as everything and everyone eventually fades into the darkness)






I'm sure tonight I will get my first good night's rest of my trip! It just feels like the day has stripped away layers of stress and hurry. And there is no rush anymore for me. I've seen people, I've explored new places. Tomorrow, I fly to Paris.

travel

My airline of choice (Air France) and its partners no longer have a direct flight from Warsaw to Milan. The fares are great -- competitive with the discount airlines -- but in flying with them, I have to always first go to Amsterdam or Paris. And that means that I have to fly out very very early, or else I may as well write off the day completely to travel, which is ridiculous because in Europe, no destination should call for that much of a time suck. So I fly out very very early. I'm up before 4, I tidy up myself and the apartment, and I leave.

(A photo of my tiny bedroom: goodbye comfy bed -- I've slept far too little on you this trip!)






Cab's there at 4:30...






Airport breakfast number 1 (Warsaw)...






Take off...






Airport breakfast number 2... (Paris)





But why Milan? Well, perhaps you've noticed that I've become glued to an itinerary on my Europe trips: a few days in Warsaw, a night somewhere outside Paris, a few days in Paris. Insofar as I only want to be away for a week, this makes sense -- it satisfies my need to be in Warsaw and Paris and, too, it indulges my craving to at least take one long, leisurely walk outside the big cities of Europe.

Still, I feel I have sucked dry all the places within an hour or two of Paris. Even after studying carefully the definitive text on good walks within an hour or so of the city, I come up with nothing new or especially exciting. (Consider, too, that I am traveling in March -- a very unpredictable month in northern Europe.)

But if I throw in just one more day to the mix, just one more, then I'm golden! There are a lot of destinations that pop up for me that would satisfy that craving for a new and peaceful walk! And some are in slightly less iffy climates. Italy comes to mind.

Still, you cannot (or at least you should not) fit in a two day trip to Italy, unless you pick a place that is not too far from a major airport. But that's okay! I love the lakes and mountains of northern Italy and there is one lake that I still have not seen and it is, in fact, the one closest to Milan (and its airports).

That is a very long explanation as to why today I find myself in Como.

At 85,000 people, it's not exactly a small village, but its location is exquisite: right at the tip of Lake Como. (You can actually stroll over to Switzerland -- it's that close to it, but you wouldn't want to: the scenic lake is entirely in Italy.)

I am full of hope and excited about all the sunshine all around me! [They say that Como verges on the tropical. You know these people exaggerate, but still, there are any number of palm trees, so there may be some truth to it.]

The flight to Milan is an easy hour and in good weather it has you believing you're a majestic mountain goat, scaling the heights of Alpine peaks.






Well, at least it looks like good flying weather. I admit to having had a bit of drama coming down: about an inch before touchdown, the pilot aborted the landing, pushing the nose up, then flying low for quite a while before speaking to us from the cockpit. No one understood what he said (he spoke rapidly), but the word le vent certainly stood out so I'm guessing (after a safe and successful second attempt) that he got a little blown about unexpectedly. In all my flights, I've had now a handful of aborted landings. They're always very dramatic because you know it comes from a split second decision: abort or crash. At least that's what it seems like from the passenger's perspective.

From the airport, I had planned on taking a train to Milan, switching there to one that would take me to Como. That's what you're supposed to do. But having had drama in the skies makes you bolder on the ground and so I do some train hopping among towns and villages outside the city, betting that a conductor wouldn't mind that I have the wrong ticket and betting, too, that ultimately, avoiding Milan altogether is a good thing.

I disembark at the lake.





I'm staying at the Palazzo Albricci Peregrini, which is in the old town. I have high expectations, because Bruno (the desk clerk? office manager?) called me just a few days ago, apologizing for the fact that someone accidentally double booked my small room. Would I mind terribly switching? To a far far better room, he tells me. If he were staying at the hotel with his girl friend, it's the room he'd pick. I trust Bruno. He always signed off on his emails by wishing me a splendid day, with an exclamation point. You gotta love a person who does that.

It should take about a dozen minutes to walk there from the lake-side station to the hotel, but I get lost. Deeply lost in streets that seem not to conform to my memorized layout of the old town.





Well, no matter. Como is bordered by water, mountains and a train track. However dumb you are about finding your way, you can always use these as your guideposts.

It would also have helped if I had memorized the number of the street where the hotel is located. It has no name plastered anywhere, so it's tough to figure out which courtyard is the one that will be your home for a night or two. Turns out it's this one.






(And this is my very sunny room. With a view toward a palm tree, but don't let it fool you -- by evening, my nose is cold from the walk outside.)






If you don't come here for the lake, or the mountains, or the good life (Como once saw itself as catering to those in search of indulgence), then perhaps you're here for the churches and the architecture. I'll just put up two representative shots of the Duomo. It's quite the church!






See the moon? Right there!






In the hotel, Bruno offers advice for tomorrow's excursions. And tonight's bar scene.  He can't tell me where some nice kids' clothes stores can be found, but he lists at least three bars where I can get an exquisite evening aperitif. I'm so very fine with that. Window shopping can wait. I walk over to a place called "Brothers" and nurse a drink called "An American in Como" forever! Who knew Campari could be infused with rosemary to stellar result??


In the evening, I have dinner at the Ristorante da Rino. It's Tuscan food. Somewhat meat based of course, but honestly I am hungry enough to eat a hawk should you be so foolish as to serve me one.

The food is uncomplicated but good. Very very good. But it is also one of those places where you are not allowed to be in a rush. Everything moves at its own pace. You have to accept that, or you will suffer. (I watch a two year old come in with her grandparents at around 8:30. She is there still when I myself leave at 10:30. Even her age doesn't warrant a quickened pace. )

I order only two courses and still, the whole process of ordering, eating, paying, etc takes three hours. And after I leave, I get lost again. How could this be???

There is a nip in the air tonight. It tells me that the sunshine tomorrow will be good and strong!

Right now, the moon is bright, I am satiated and I am completely wiped out from too little sleep. Ask me what day of the week we're on and I honestly cannot tell you. At least not within any short set of minutes.

Tomorrow, I do hope I will stick to my plan to explore the lake. Today? My eyes are closed even as I write this.