Oct 08 Trip Report: Bologna, Ravenna, Orvieto, Montepulciano-mangia, mosaico, magnifico!
Nov 19th, 2008, 05:45 PM
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Saturday, October 18
When I was planning the trip, I had difficulty finding a Malpensa area airport hotel with a room for 3 adults. Well, actually, there were a few plunked down in some industrial wasteland. I could not bear the thought of spending a couple hundred euros on an airport hotel—blecch! So we decided to stay in Como our last night.
DS thought it would be cool to stop in Switzerland (for the sake of simply saying we had been to Switzerland), so we drive northward from Tuscany and head up the A9 towards the border. As we cross, we are waved over and told that there is a 30E charge to use the national highway. Oops. We are given some vague instructions and eventually make our way across through some alternative roads. We arrived in Chiasso, which did not meet my expectations of Switzerland and which I imagine is not typical of the rest of the country. (In fairness, we did not give it much of a chance since we parked as soon as possible and started to walk around for our short visit.)
We get back on the road and approach Como from the Como Nord exit. We only get a short distance when traffic comes to a standstill. After a while we give up and decide to turn around and approach the hotel from Como Sud. Same problem. We have been in New York, LA and lived in Philly, and have never experienced such a traffic mess. Eventually, we get close enough to the hotel to park (illegally) and make our way to the office.
We are staying at Il Riva a Lago ([email protected], Via Crespi, 4 - 22100 Como, tel./fax : +39-031302333). It is more hostel than hotel but it is clean and close to the waterfront and the Centro Storico. (We have a room with a private bath, but two of the beds are bunks and the room itself is very austere.) However, it is only 85E and the desk clerk is very helpful to us. (He explains there has been a bike race in the morning that closed off many of the roads.)
The clerk tells us he will direct us to a parking space near the hotel, so we head to the car. We are pointed in a direction headed out of town, and so have to drive on to find a point to turn around. Since that means we will only get back into a line of traffic that is at a standstill, we decide to keep driving up the shores of Como to another town. We stop in Torno, which seems like it would be charming in daylight. We walk around, but the restaurants are not open yet and the night is getting chilly. We buy some takeout pizza, then head back to Como.
The traffic has calmed down by 7:00 PM, so we are able to park and then walk around town a bit. Como is pleasant, and I wish we had more time to explore. But I can understand why other lake towns are more heavily favored. We stop at the Pasticceria Monti near the waterfront and I get a delicious sundae with marrons glace. A nice exclamation point on the end of our food-heavy trip.
The day was, overall, a disappointment compared to the rest of the trip but I look at it philosophically and think that, if it were truly outstanding, it would be hard to come home. On our trip to Great Britain last year, we experienced the heavy rains that caused the flooding in York and other areas. It did not dampen our enjoyment, and we loved visiting Edinburgh, London, Wales and the Lake District; fortunately, we had great weather for the times we planned hikes (the skies miraculously cleared). On the last day of our GB trip, we headed from the lakes to our Glasgow airport hotel, again in the rain. As we were driving along, after a sodden stop at Hadrian’s Wall, we heard “ow airport. A suspected terrorist attack.” That got our attention, but we were not sure if the announcer said “Glasgow” or “Heathrow,” and the second seemed more likely. We discovered at one of the roadside stops that a terrorist has indeed driven a SUV into the Glasgow airport terminal. We were not sure we would get to the hotel, since many roads near the airport were closed, but eventually we parked on the police perimeter, walked through the gauntlet of news vans, and made it to the hotel. It was wall-to-wall people, since many travelers had been evacuated there. We tried to figure the situation for flights out, and when we finally get through to USAir at about 10:00 PM, they said it would likely be a week before flights could leave Glasgow. Another week in GB with the then-current exchange rate of 1GBS =1.95 US would mean DS2 could not go to college. So we said “yes” to another flight--out of Heathrow at 11:00 AM the next morning. We caught 2 hours shut-eye, and then DH drove through the night to Heathrow. At that point, it felt very good to get on a plane headed back home. (And I know were lucky to only be on the fringe of this situation. I can only begin to imagine how terrible it is to be in the thick of such an event, or any similar catastrophe.)
Sunday, October 19
We arrive at MXP and go through the usual check-in routine. DH has packed our vacuum-sealed pecorino cheese in his carry on, and when we send the bag through the x-ray machine, the blobs catch the attention of the guards. I am very defensive after losing a sausage to customs on our last Italy trip, but after we explain that it is cheese, I am amused to hear the guard ask “where from?” (If you say the wrong town, do they confiscate it?)
When I was planning the trip, I had difficulty finding a Malpensa area airport hotel with a room for 3 adults. Well, actually, there were a few plunked down in some industrial wasteland. I could not bear the thought of spending a couple hundred euros on an airport hotel—blecch! So we decided to stay in Como our last night.
DS thought it would be cool to stop in Switzerland (for the sake of simply saying we had been to Switzerland), so we drive northward from Tuscany and head up the A9 towards the border. As we cross, we are waved over and told that there is a 30E charge to use the national highway. Oops. We are given some vague instructions and eventually make our way across through some alternative roads. We arrived in Chiasso, which did not meet my expectations of Switzerland and which I imagine is not typical of the rest of the country. (In fairness, we did not give it much of a chance since we parked as soon as possible and started to walk around for our short visit.)
We get back on the road and approach Como from the Como Nord exit. We only get a short distance when traffic comes to a standstill. After a while we give up and decide to turn around and approach the hotel from Como Sud. Same problem. We have been in New York, LA and lived in Philly, and have never experienced such a traffic mess. Eventually, we get close enough to the hotel to park (illegally) and make our way to the office.
We are staying at Il Riva a Lago ([email protected], Via Crespi, 4 - 22100 Como, tel./fax : +39-031302333). It is more hostel than hotel but it is clean and close to the waterfront and the Centro Storico. (We have a room with a private bath, but two of the beds are bunks and the room itself is very austere.) However, it is only 85E and the desk clerk is very helpful to us. (He explains there has been a bike race in the morning that closed off many of the roads.)
The clerk tells us he will direct us to a parking space near the hotel, so we head to the car. We are pointed in a direction headed out of town, and so have to drive on to find a point to turn around. Since that means we will only get back into a line of traffic that is at a standstill, we decide to keep driving up the shores of Como to another town. We stop in Torno, which seems like it would be charming in daylight. We walk around, but the restaurants are not open yet and the night is getting chilly. We buy some takeout pizza, then head back to Como.
The traffic has calmed down by 7:00 PM, so we are able to park and then walk around town a bit. Como is pleasant, and I wish we had more time to explore. But I can understand why other lake towns are more heavily favored. We stop at the Pasticceria Monti near the waterfront and I get a delicious sundae with marrons glace. A nice exclamation point on the end of our food-heavy trip.
The day was, overall, a disappointment compared to the rest of the trip but I look at it philosophically and think that, if it were truly outstanding, it would be hard to come home. On our trip to Great Britain last year, we experienced the heavy rains that caused the flooding in York and other areas. It did not dampen our enjoyment, and we loved visiting Edinburgh, London, Wales and the Lake District; fortunately, we had great weather for the times we planned hikes (the skies miraculously cleared). On the last day of our GB trip, we headed from the lakes to our Glasgow airport hotel, again in the rain. As we were driving along, after a sodden stop at Hadrian’s Wall, we heard “ow airport. A suspected terrorist attack.” That got our attention, but we were not sure if the announcer said “Glasgow” or “Heathrow,” and the second seemed more likely. We discovered at one of the roadside stops that a terrorist has indeed driven a SUV into the Glasgow airport terminal. We were not sure we would get to the hotel, since many roads near the airport were closed, but eventually we parked on the police perimeter, walked through the gauntlet of news vans, and made it to the hotel. It was wall-to-wall people, since many travelers had been evacuated there. We tried to figure the situation for flights out, and when we finally get through to USAir at about 10:00 PM, they said it would likely be a week before flights could leave Glasgow. Another week in GB with the then-current exchange rate of 1GBS =1.95 US would mean DS2 could not go to college. So we said “yes” to another flight--out of Heathrow at 11:00 AM the next morning. We caught 2 hours shut-eye, and then DH drove through the night to Heathrow. At that point, it felt very good to get on a plane headed back home. (And I know were lucky to only be on the fringe of this situation. I can only begin to imagine how terrible it is to be in the thick of such an event, or any similar catastrophe.)
Sunday, October 19
We arrive at MXP and go through the usual check-in routine. DH has packed our vacuum-sealed pecorino cheese in his carry on, and when we send the bag through the x-ray machine, the blobs catch the attention of the guards. I am very defensive after losing a sausage to customs on our last Italy trip, but after we explain that it is cheese, I am amused to hear the guard ask “where from?” (If you say the wrong town, do they confiscate it?)
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parkhill24
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Mar 13th, 2009 06:53 AM
