7/20 If Lake Como is good enough for George Clooney, then it's good enough for me!

By the time the wake-up call came at 6:30, Mikayla's alarm on her phone had gone off 3 times. She finally got up and left the room to go to her boyfriend's room. I got dressed quickly (it helps when you get in the habit of laying everything out the night before), put my luggage outside my door, and went for breakfast.

I sat by Jackie, a older woman from Florida traveling alone, and a couple from Perth, Australia. The topic of the morning was whether we thought the very strange Saudi Arabian couple was going to show up or not (backstory: two nights before, the couple had left the hotel in the middle of the night apparently in a taxi. The guy had a stomachache and supposedly went to a hospital. Problem was, they didn't actually tell anyone they were leaving, they had the hotel room key, and after our tour guide had called all the hospitals, she could find no record of them anywhere. She even had to file a police report.)

2 minutes after we started talking about it, they walked in. You couldn't miss them: the guy was huge and wore shirts about 7 sizes too small. She wore a trench coat everyday and a protective mask over her face at all times, which we figured out was a substitute for a traditional face covering.

We found out later that they had paid a cab driver 500 euros to get them from Wurzburg, Germany to St. Moritz, Switzerland. Crazy!

We then took off from our hotel at 8:00 to catch the Bernina Express train that would take us through the alps down into Tirano, Italy. We had a whole train car reserved for our group. Our driver, Andre, would meet us in Tirano with our coach bus.

The train ride lasted two hours. We saw so much snow, water falls and glaciers that it was hard to believe it was July. We also saw cool little villages tucked away in valleys. Every time something cool would pop up outside, the whole train car oohed and ahhhed and we all moved to one side of the train or the other to take pictures.
The train made lots of stops in between and by about 11:15, we were in Tirano.

We were given just over an hour to grab lunch and walk around the town. Jan, Eric and I found some benches and shared the leftover bread, meat and cheese from the night before. Afterwards, we found a supermarket, and then found a gelateria where I had a huge scoop of chocolate gelato in a cone. While I was eating, an old Malaysian woman from the tour asked me if she could keep my empty Coke Zero bottle as a souvenir. I thought she was joking but she stuck her hand out for it. I gave it to her and she put it in her bag and walked away. Weird.

We boarded the bus again heading for our next quick stop: Lake Como. We got there about 2 hours later. The sun had come out and the weather was great! We made a quick rest stop as we drove around the lake. The highlight was driving by George Clooney's multi million dollar villa overlooking the lake.

The water was clear and the houses and restaurants surrounding it were amazing to look at. I was sad it was only a stop on the way to our next location because I would have loved to have stayed there for a week! It will definitely be a place I come back to...

A few hours later we entered Lugano. One of the first things you see is the awesome lake, which is similar to Lake Como but is super deep, apparently reaching 400 meters' depth in some parts.

We got to our hotel at around 5:00 and checked in. We had 2 hours until our dinner and lake cruise so I paid the 2 francs it cost for unlimited wifi and hung out in my room.

While sitting on my bed, I heard a loud noise and looked outside to see what it was. Apparently, a funicular tram system runs right under and through the hotel. And apparently it runs until midnight. Sweeet....

I straightened my hair, which took forever, and took a very quick shower before meeting everyone downstairs for the dinner and cruise. Everyone was kind of dressed up so I was glad I did, too. We walked down the street to the pier where we got on our private cruise boat. I immediately went up top so I could get good pictures of the scenery. Then our boat started to sail.

As we went along, I admired the beautiful homes along the water, which our guide told us were priced from 1.5-5 million francs. He also pointed out other important buildings and pointed out the border where Lake Lugano Switzerland turns into Lake Lugano Italy.

We got to our grotto, which is considered a grotto and not a restaurant because it only serves local fare instead of a variety of food. I chose a seat along the railing and Lucinda, Paul, and Justin sat right by me.

We got our starter soups or salads (I had salad... Thank goodness because the soup was split pea soup.. Ughhhh...) We also got a bread basket, which I annihilated. We then got our main course- a piece of pork, a sausage, a chicken wing and risotto. The waiters then came around with polenta, prawns, and fish. I even tried some of the fish, but it only reconfirmed for me that I don't like fish. For dessert, we got a panna cotta type of vanilla custard, which was actually pretty good.

After dinner we just hung out for a while because we had to wait for our boat to return. While we waited, we were continually harassed by bees. A young girl in our group even got stung.

By the time we got back on the boat the sun had set so it was a bit colder. I decided to sit inside the boat, which was unfortunate because I had to listen to loud Indian Canadian lady and her daughters play a card game. The boat driver was trying to give commentary but I couldn't hear a thing. He had to ask them 4 times to be quiet and even got up out of his seat to ask them to be quiet, which they still didn't do.

When we finished the cruise, I immediately got off the boat and made my way back toward the hotel. The city looked awesome because it was all lit up and the weather was actually quite nice. There were a lot of people out at cafes and shops and walking around. I would have stayed out but I was tired, as usual, and had to be up at 6:30.

I went back to my room, laid out my clothes for the next day, and went to bed around 10:45.