Menaggio and Bellagio, Italia (Italy)

I was the last one to bed last night and so I didn’t get to meet any other of my roommates here at the La Primula Youth Hostel.  Apparently, I was the first one up this morning and so I took the computer outside on the porch to catch up on writing a little.  Breakfast was a single croissant, and a glass of pear juice.  I’d never had pear juice before, it was nice.  I’ll have to hunt some up when I get home.

When I got back to the room I met Karen from Birmingham, England, she’s on a week long holiday here at the lake taking a break from work.  We talked for a bit and then I headed into town to hunt up the tourist office so I can try to find me some of that internet.  No luck.  They did tell me I might find it in Bellagio though.  Sounds good to me.  I hopped on the next ferry that made a quick stop in Varenna and then on to Bellagio on the other side of the lake.  In the line to get on board, Karen and I ran into each other again, so we shared the ride over.  It was a perfectly pleasant ride of 40 minutes or so.  Karen went walking and I went to the TI office.  Apparently, they’ve heard of the internet a couple of streets over and five minutes later I was in a charming little cafe, with that elusive internet.  I even got to connect hard wired rather than wireless so I got faster speeds.

I started uploading the last four days worth of posts and pictures and also did all my emails, paid some bills and made bookings for the next couple of nights in Venice.  Did some correspondence with Jan, my awesome neighbor who is collecting my mail and taking care of things for me while I’m gone.  I appreciate you Jan, thanks.  I had a couple of glasses of a nice local red wine during my four-hour stint on the internet.  The bartender also brought me a plate with a selection of thinly sliced meats and cheeses, gratis apparently.

Looking for Internet————————Found Internet

After I took care of my online needs, I went walking to explore this little town.  It’s lovely, lots of up and down walkways and tiny streets.  I was walking down one street and turned the corner and I see a band milling around.  Mostly brass instruments and a couple drums, it was all men who  looked to be in their 60s and they wore uniforms of black pants, white shirts with epaulets, and black caps.  So, I thought I’d wait and see what happens.

Without any introduction or fanfare, they all just snapped to and started playing, I thought that was odd.  I tried to position myself to get better pictures and just as the camera shutter clicked, I saw through the viewfinder around the other corner to my right, which I had not seen before, a hearse with a coffin and flowers and next to it was a grieving family.  Oh Lord, I was like deer caught in the headlights.  I backed up to my corner again, put the camera away and stood there trying to be respectful.  Several others came by to hear what was going on and wandered right into the middle of it even worse than I did.  A couple of cars came by too and drove right through the proceedings.  No one seemed to mind.  Eventually, the police got a handle on it and got all traffic stopped.  I *thought* the song the band was playing was kind of slow and sad.

I walked around some more, took some pictures and got in the queue for the 5:20 boat back to Menaggio and Karen showed up at the same time.  We decided to get dinner when we got back to Menaggio, so we had a pizza together and walked back to the hostel.  I put my clothes in the wash and sat down on the porch to write this.

It was a pretty easygoing day, no big revelations, I didn’t kick anyone’s ass, didn’t have to deal with traffic, yeah a pretty slow day.

I noticed more than one comment on the blog regarding a previous post describing the horse with mad cow.  Apparently, horses roll around like that quite often.  Well knock me over with a stick.  I guess I’m the one with mad cow then.

---