The morning greeted us in a beautiful way when we woke but we had read the weather forecast. Rain was due about noon. The weather gave us a clear allowance until about 1 pm. This gave us a chance to catch up on email in no hurry, get dressed and walk down the tall hill for lunch at the Restaurane Elite. It's at the foot of our hill and was highly recommended. We were ravenous, at least, I was. We took the easy way out and ordered from the simplified menu. ...

Our cousin, Deb, nailed it. Unless you are dying to do something like see the Northern Lights from the Arctic Circle, go dog sledding, or even hike Killamanjaro, Rapallo is by far a top must-do destination. We have visited Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Capri, Sorrento, Positano and now Portofino. Rapallo is THE place to visit. It is breathlessly beautiful. Each one of our photos is better than the last. There is so much to be curious about, so mu...

Italy is a little like Florida. It has a strange shape for an area and the experience in the country is totally different depending if you happen to be in the east, west, north, south or central. We are in far northern Italy. In fact we only 2 hours from Switzerland, 2 hours from France, and 3 hours from Austria, and right here in Rapallo, we are directly on the Mediterranean Sea. We are near Genoa, near Pisa and a long, long way from Sicily. It is a littl...

Como - I like this place! Blue! Crystal blue were the skies this morning when we opened the shades!!! Some strong wind must have blown through during the night to chase away the rain! Gloria! Gloria! How invigorating! Today is the day for our fast boat ride through the lake to the boat's end destination, Bellagio (once again). Lake Como is a very big; it takes one hour to reach Bellagio by water - maybe only 45 minutes non-stop but our fast boat made ...

We are hardcore. We must be. Today was a national holiday in Europe and ordinarily that means hordes of people out in streets, plazas, restaurant, bars, amusements, cars, buses, boats and trains. But the weatherman was correct in his 100% rain forecast today. It was raining when we woke up this morning and it just stopped about 2 hours ago around 6 pm. We made breakfast of eggs, bacon wrapped sausages and some of our extra special cheese from Zurich. Heavy...