Late last night I realised it was a four hour run to Bellagio. Sadly that meant not visiting Luzern again, or spending very much time in Lugano. Driving down through the Lepontine Alps the view to the peaks were buried under cloud - but what a vista - lush green hills and a dark grey skies left a picture of a winter Switzerland in my mind for the second time. We headed into the 17kn long Gotthard tunnel through a winter vista and emerged into brilliant sunlight at the other end.
We snaked our way down into Lugano, definitely deserving of more time in the future then across to Bellagio. We new the Swiss spoke Italian in this part of the world, but everything was in Italian and looked the part we couldn't work out if we'd crossed the boarder without realising it. But soon enough we came to the boarder crossing, weeds and potholed roads let us know we'd now really passed into Italy.
Snaking around Lake Como, we got to take the second (and last) ferry ride of the trip across to Bellagio. Lunch at La Punta was booked for 12:30 which was just as well, it took forever to find a place to leave the bus in a town bat suited for mopeds. No map and no 3G meant we had to meander through the streets to find our destination, what a chore!
A lazy shady lunch filled the next few hours in this paradise before we headed off to stroll back up the hill and do some shopping. Proper James Bond scenery ensued as we left Bellagio, snaking around Lake Como, Alps streaking up in the sky, a sea planes taking off from the deep turquoise lake - could inspire you to paint. Definitely in the wrong car for this leg, awesome rally corners around the lake and hairpin laden hill climbs would have been awesome fun in the mini.
It wasn't long before we hit a thunder storm as we made our way down into Lombardy and into Milano, the rain pelting down made it even harder to make any sense out of the Russian accent on the GPS trying to pronounce some of these Street names. The rain broke just as we hit peak hour and the crazy moped flocks. We get to our hotel which is a palace compared to where we've been staying so far - monogramed bathrobes, separate room for the kids and as Emerson screamed from the bathroom "One of those butt washers like Garry has!"
Great as the room is, it's not a patch on Milan, so we dumped our bags and headed straight up to the Galleria to check it out - the Duomo at dusk is gob smacking, another one of those bits of Italian architecture that makes resistance futile But of course that's not what we're here for, across the square and into the Galleria and like a seasoned tracker Gab has targeted Louis Vuitton in four strides. The kids and I took turns grinding our heal into the Bull's "privates" for good luck meanwhile Gab made her own good luck in LV.
We strolled around leaking in the magnificence then settled in for dinner (a light one after our delicious lunch) in a restaurant nestled between Louis Vuitton, Prada and Versace.
A slow stroll back to the room and it's not until pitch dark at 10pm that I realise it isn't 6:30pm and shove the kids into bed - we're off on a 4hr tour tomorow with a trip advisor super star, here's hoping he deserves it.