Menaggio

Thursday
Today we were moving on from Bellagio, but not until the afternoon, so we had the morning free for a short ferry ride to visit Menaggio. This proved to be a little disappointing, in that we got a bit lost on our walk up in the hills, and didn’t quite reach our destination. Also, it was a somewhat overcast morning, so what views we did have, were rather hazy. My blip is of the promenade area, while we were waiting for our return ferry. Having picked up our cases from the hotel, we took the high speed hydrofoil back to Como, where we picked up a rental car and drove to Lugano. Our ultimate destination tomorrow is Stresa on Lake Maggiore, but the route takes you past Lake Lugano, so we decided to spend one night here. Most of Lake Lugano is in Switzerland - the Swiss border at this point juts down into Italy. Our hotel was actually in Paradiso, just south of Lugano. Having checked in, we went for a walk along the lakefront, before walking a fair way up the hill to a restaurant for dinner. It was obviously more of a local restaurant - we sat outside on the terrace, and seemed to be surrounded by Italians rather than other tourists, which made a change. The skies had cleared by this time, and it was a beautiful evening.