Lake Como, Part 1

I'm going to break this up into several bits. Partly because Lake Como is such a magnificent locale that it deserves lots of photos and narrative, but also partly because I can't find the time to sit at the computer long enough to do it all in one go.

Lake Como is not an easy destination to reach. We had to take a car, a plane, a bus, a train, and a boat. And then walk up the side of a town carved into a mountain with a suitcase, a stroller and a very, very tired 4 year old. This all added up to quite a long day. But it was all worth it because I can honestly say that it is the most beautiful place I have ever laid eyes upon.



Our flight left at 7:30am, which meant we had to leave our house at 4:30. This is prior to public transportation running, so we had to take a car service to the airport. This is also awesome, because the car service screwed up somehow and came to our house the morning before. At 4:30. Waking up the whole house. Awesome!

I should I have known that the trip was going to get off to an auspicious start when I was already wide awake at 2 am when Kate came bounding up the stairs to our bedroom telling us "I was all alone in my bedroom". We tried coaxing her back to sleep for some time, and she finally fell back asleep somewhere around 3:30. She re-awoke in a great, chipper mood and was very pleasant for the car ride and check-in at the airport. Riding in a car is a big novelty around here, since I can count the number of times in the last year we have done so on one hand.

We have always been proud of what a great little traveler Kate has been. She doesn't even need the bribe of DVDs or those little game consoles to keep her entertained on flights. She is usually content to read, color or just ask 4,589,321 questions about inane things. Apparently, the Gods of the Travel Universe wanted to shake things up a bit for us. There were lots of tears, kicking the seat back in front of us. & even a few ear-piercing shrieks on board our British Airways flight. Michael, who is usually Drama #1, was easy-peasy, and just looked on with surprise. It was horrid and we were humiliated.

The day culminated in Kate not getting any Gelato, and a stressful early dinner/lunch that looked something like this:



Not amused.


Everybody look at me 'cuz I'm standing on a boat! Even Kate knows this is Danny's favorite song. Every time we got onto a boat she asked him to sing it.