14th September Today we went to Switzerland for lunch. I just love the way that that sounds! Instead of driving to the other side of the lake, like yesterday, we decided to take the car ferry over. Very short trip about 10 mins. Lugano is about ½ hours drive from Menaggio where the boat drops you off. Lugano is on Lake Lugano and is a lot smaller than Como or Lake Como. Not as picturesque. We walked around did some shopping , had some lunch and came home. Rig...

September 13th Last night we collected a very tired Matt from Milan Malpensa Airport. It's good to have him with us. After familiarising our selves with the area yesterday, today we went a little further afield. We decided to visit Villa del Balbianello as our one palazzo visit. From where we are staying, more of that later, we can see the villa only about 500m to a km away, yet to drive it took about 11/2 hours. We had to drive back down to Como and then up t...

September 11th We are sitting in our apartment on Lake Como watching the most spectacular storm. There is thunder echoing through the valley, lightning flashing and hail stones the size of jaffas. Welcome to Lake Como. We arrived into town to find the access road to our village, Lezzeno, closed. Road works apparently. So time for Basil to find an alternate route. We drove in to Bellagio via the mountains. What a spectacular view. Once again, this place is amaz...