Italy // Lake Como

One of the main reasons we headed to southern Swizterland was so that we could go to Lake Como for the day. It was a quick 45 minute drive from Luggano and was beyond anything that I could have imagined. I pictured of a small little lake with sprawling estates with ridiculously large mansions and people yachting all day, but what we found was a ridiculously large lake with windy, narrow roads, tons of quaint fishing towns and quick glimpses of ridiculously large mansions. From Como we drove along the eastern, inner side of the lake (I had no idea Lake Como was shaped like an upside down Y!) with the goal of making it to Bellagio for dinner. Jack's mission of the day (and every day, really) was to find the perfect swimming spot, so we pulled over to a few of the towns in search of a place to take a dip. 

The first town we wandered into was Torno, a picturesque little village with a ferry dock, fishing boats, and the cutest Italian cafes and restaurants on the water. As you can see, it had the most gorgeous views of the western side of the lake and we watched the boats sail by and dreamed up a fake dinner party with our friends George and Amal that we were going to later. I could have stayed there for hours, but unfortunately we didn't find the perfect swimming spot, so we headed out again to find "the one". 

We headed back north on the "death road" (seriously, it was terrifying. Motorcycles and cars flying by us on a one way, curvy street, with people honking and passing up from behind. I don't know how people don't crash on this road!) but pulled off when we saw a driveway leading to a church. We parked on the steepest street, hiked down through tight alleyways, passed big italian families having lunch, and creepily followed a group of teenagers in bathing suits to the PERFECT swimming spot. We were in heaven. 

After the swim, we headed back up to Bellagio, which was still another 45 minutes up the lake, but by the time we got there it was unbelievably crowded. Apparently the thing to do is to take the ferry there instead of trying to park (people parked miles away and were walking along the narrow road, which was terrifying) but we still drove through looking for a spot to check out the town. However, once we finally got into the town there were too many selfie sticks and big crowds for us to warrant the stop. We drove back along the lake at sunset, daydreaming about winning the lottery and buying a big mansion next to George and Amal on the lake.