Lake Como is the third largest lake in Italy. Its about 30 miles long and is extremely deep at over 1,400 ft. Its bottom is over 600 ft below sea level. It is surrounded by hills and in some cases the only way to reach the homes on the ridges is via funicular as in this next photo.
Here are the 2 funicular cars passing each other at the mid point.
Lake Como is in the shape of an inverted Y. The city of Como is on the southwestern fork. Here is a shot down that branch of the lake as we set out on our cruise.
As you can see the weather was looking threatening but we were lucky and it did not start raining until we were most of the way back and then we had hail in addition to rain, thunder and lightening.
What Lake Como is famous for is as a summer retreat for the rich and famous. One of the most recent arrivals is George Clooney who apparently owns several houses on the lake. The next photos show some examples of these "small" country cottages.
This one has its own private elevator as the road is part way up the hill.
There are also a lot of gardens and here are 2 examples.
Despite the weather we make it back to our hotel. After resting up a little we head out to explore the town and get some dinner. The storm has passed and there are blue skies overhead. Just up the street is the cathedral. I don' have enough room to get a full shot of the facade but the spires on the top are pretty impressive.
The altar in the main nave is also worth a photo.
We had picked out a highly rated restaurant but when we get there we find that a lot of others have also found out about it and we can't get in. So we end up eating back at the hotel and have a very good and interesting meal. We start off with pumpkin gnocchi with guinea fowl sauce for the first course and local lake perch fillets with risotto.
Tomorrow we head to Switzerland and Lake Lugano and then back to Italy and the town of Baveno on Lake Maggiore.
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