Lake Como, Italy

Since the Roman times aristocrats and wealthy people have flocked to Lago di Como and in modern times it's no different. Richard Branson, George Cloony and Madonna have called it home at one point or another and the area has featured in many movies such as Star Wars, Casino Royale and Ocean's Twelve just to name a few.

The lake covers 146 square kilometres and is 400 metres deep. It's deepest point lies 200m below sea level. After lake Garda and Lake Maggiore Lake Como is Italy's third largest lake.

We had rented a townhouse just back off the lake and based ourselves here for a 7 day stay. We had been told it was too long but we're not the sort of people to rush around, see a few things then leave and wanted to enjoy a relaxing exploration of the area.

One of our first places to visit was Villa del Balbianello and its famous terraced gardens at the commune (Municipality) of Lenno. We took a boat there, which was awesome in itself and wandered the gardens and the villa for a few hours. It had been a Franciscan monastery in the 13th century until it was converted to a villa by a Cardinal in 1787. On his death it went to his nephew Luigi Porro Lambertenghi, then the Visconti family, American businessman Butler Ames, to explorer Count Guido Monzino and finally the Italian National Trust.

One of the attractions of the villa is an amazing collection of items from Count Guido Monzino's explorations around the world and is well-worth the time to inspect. We wandered the gardens as well, right down to the gates at the water's edge.

The gates blow lead to a landing where guests would have disembarked boats to make their way up the hill to the villa.

The villa has been used in many films but most notably Star Wars (Clone Wars) as the back drop for Naboo and the location where James Bond convalesced in the movie Casino Royale after being tortured by the bad guy. In fact when we were there a wedding was about to take place in which the bride and groom were dressed in Star Wars costumes. (Princess Leia and a Storm trooper!) It's a thing apparently. :)

During our stay we went to Bellagio also, again by boat, which is the best way to get around: Great scenery without the stress of driving on narrow roads.

On Bellagio we ate an amazing meal of spaghetti with some tasty red wine. I'm not much of a wine-person so I don't know if it was good or not. It was zesty on the back palette though or something like that! :) The food was what you would expect and the setting was simply stunning! I have a picture of me getting stuck into it my massive plate of spaghetti but photo's of me are not very flattering so I'll not share it.

After lunch this hottie and I went for a walk through the town and surrounding gardens. Everywhere we looked was green, flowers and stunning lake views.

If you get the chance to go to Lake Como I suggest you try and see it from the air as well. We decided to risk life and limb in a sea plane which we had never done before. Taking off is...Interesting. Landing too, but other than that it's just a great experience. Below is our plane...Not ours, but you know what I mean.

Photography from the plane was not easy (with my photography skills) but here's a semi-decent one.

When we travel we like to walk a lot. We find it's the best way to see things, to meet the locals and to avoid a lot of the tourist-bus crowds. They tend to stick pretty close to where the bus drops them. We were walking around the lake, on this day I think for about 4-5 hours and saw this girl posing for a photo shoot for some reason. We also visited the Volta Temple which is a museum dedicated to Alessandro Volta (1745 -1827) who was a scientist and inventor of the electrical battery that day.

This was back in Como at the Duomo. I think a local school had decorated the tree for some reason.

If you're heading to Italy and have the time you have to put Lake Como on your agenda. There's superb places to eat and so many things to do. I think doing nothing whilst in Lake Como is something you need to do also; Sit by the lake with a coffee and watch the world go by. You won't regret it. Whilst in Lake Como we also travelled to Milan for a day which is about a 1 hour train ride.

So, thanks for reading my little post about another place I've been to. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading.