We made it to Italy!

8 hours, a ton of time zones, car service, airplane, train and metro! We are feeling well traveled!

Our flight out of Denver was delayed – figures!

 

The amiben i requested from my doctor worked like a charm! I popped it in as we were taxi-ing and was asleep by the time we were at a safe cruising altitude! Hubby had to pry his hand out of mine!  :)

 

We arrived in England  at  about the noon hour. With the delay we were right at the 2 hour mark to change terminals – AHHHH!

Luckily the airport was in England so it was easy to figure out where to go and to beg and plead to get to the front of the line since our plane reservations listed when we needed to clear security to be able to make it to your plane on time! (which was in 20 minutes)

 

 

I would suggest that others that are flying skip the layover in Heathrow! After we arrived in Italy we learned that Terminal 5 was in the process of losing bags! Ahhhh! The fellas lost one of their packages that they checked that was signage for the conference. Isn’t that a bummer! Stupid British Airlines! I can say with certainty that is there is another option i will not fly BA! When we bought our tickets it was only after we bought them that is was indicated that we could only reserve our seats 24 hours prior to our takeoff time.  Grrrr…  And they didn’t keep us hydrated, no extra trips with water for the passengers. Definitely not up to the level they were back in 92.

 

After we arrive at the hotel we had some dinner at the restaurant around the corner – bad service. We were about 45 minutes prior to closing and ended up having to change our order because the chef did not want to cook too many different thing. Grrr again. I told Tom and John that we would not be eating there again!

Saturday morning we awoke pretty acclimated! Yeah! Better living thru chemistry!

We headed out o Lake Como and Varenna. Lovely little town by the lake! We did the passarella (a little walkway by the lake) and found a lovely little place for gelato – Gelateria La Giazzera. It was run by a cute little lady that was very helpful! Tom got hazelnut, i had coconut, and Hubby has chocolate. It was my first experience with gelato – I liked it!

 

We had intended to eat lunch at Natlus Bar which was recommended by Rick Steve’s Italy 2008 book, but we were a little early for the tourist season, so they were not open. We also came upon a lovely little tradition of lunch ends at 2:30 which means they stop letting you into the restaurant by 1:30…  Grrr…  We found another place closer to the ferry – Hotel Olivedo’s Restaurant that catered to Americans which meant they stayed open thru the "lunch dinner break". I had the ravioli – nummies! Hubby had the "dried beef" – aka prosuito! The staff was very nice and they had a little poddle that kept everyone company!

 

After lunch we took a look at the San Gigorneo Chuch. It wasn’t open but it was very pretty and and neat walk to see it! Lot of houses on the edges of the hills, ity bity cars, and cobblestone streets! Also – my favorite thing to photograph – empty stair cases! Woohoo!

We took the 4:30 train back and was lucky enough to still have time for a visit to the Duomo! 2nd largest church in Italy, largest of it’s kind in the world! You get to hang out on the room – which of course is super duper cool! With the sun setting it was really an amazing location!

 

We finally exited the room around 7ish and went across the "plaza" to a roof top restaurant – La Rinascente Department Store. The deck itself was reserved for drink only so we ate inside – which was fine since the wind picked up a lot by the time we had finished dinner. We started with an eggplant and buffalo mozzarella fried layered thing. I really liked it! Tom who was most interested in it, was disappointed when it came! Too much eggplant – not enough cheese! Hubby and I each got a buffalo mozzarella, tomato salad – which was amazing! Fresh mozarella is simply amazing! Hubby did the Diavolo pizza – with fresh mozzarella it was a little too soggy for him. I enjoyed the bite I had! (can you tell who will be much bigger by the time she gets home?). I had thinly sliced veggies between wafer think circles of parmesan cheese! Yummy! Tom did a king crap risotto that looked really weird (black rissotto), but apparently tasted rather good!

After dinner we took a look at the Galleria – all glass ceiling mall. Very pretty – but too many vendor’s attacking you to buy flowers etc.

The other excitement was apparently a "jumper" on the roof of the Duomo. We couldn’t figure out where he was but the police, fire etc was all there!

By 10:30 we were pooped and back in our room! Whew! What a day!