Bellagio and Lago di Como

Last weekend we drove to Lago di Como and stayed in Bellagio. On Sunday we attended a concours d'elegance near the town of Como. A concours is a gathering of classic automobiles and motorcycles where the vehicles are judged on their appearance. Mechanical soundness is not a big factor. I will write about the concours in a separate post.

Bellagio is located at the end of a peninsula that sticks up into Lake Como, about 35 km from the town of Como. It is a lovely little town with quite a few cute shops, hotels and restaurants. It's raison d'etre seems to be tourism and it does that well. Here is a view of the town from just south of it. We stayed at a hotel near the bell tower that sticks up in the middle.

Lago di Como reminded me of Lake Washington in Seattle. It is long and narrow. This view looks south. On Saturday the town was crowded with day trippers. There are passenger ferries that link it with Como and other towns along the lake. There are also little car ferries.

The lake is surrounded by mountains, some of them up to 6,000 ft. tall. The day was hot and muggy and hazy.

Many of the buildings look like this.

Here is one of the small car ferries. They reminded me of the ferry to Guemes Island in the San Juans.

Here is the ferry dock.

Loading and unloading a ferry seems universal. They seemed to follow all the same steps as the ferry we regularly take from Mukilteo to Whidbey Island.

And the passengers walking on to head across the lake.

There is a lovely lakeside promenade. We bought some sodas and chips and sat on some steps by the lake for a while. The planters were full of new plantings. As the summer goes on they will fill in and be quite lush and colorful.

There were a lot of motorcyclists on the roads and in the towns. These people had their dog carrier strapped to the back!

Here is a boat storage area at the small marina facility. The top of it is one large deck that looked perfect for parties and dancing.

Given we were in the playground of the rich and famous we saw a number of really beautiful cars on the roads, like this Lamborghini.

The "streets" in Bellagio are called salita which means climb. You can see why in this photo.

This building had a lot of lovely detail--balconies, shutters, a fresco behind glass, and a big grapevine.

Not far from our hotel we saw this OLD motorcycle with sidecar--maybe someone's touring vehicle.

The town is obviously older than most of it looks. This church looks to be early Romanesque. The Our hotel was next door and the bells rang (LOUDLY) from 7 am until 10 pm. We set an alarm for 7 am on Sunday but really did not need it. There is no sleeping in at our hotel!

Inside the hotel was evidence of quite a bit of wealth. This picture shows the ornate alter piece. There were also lovely mosaics on the ceiling.

This is a nice picture of the Sacred Heart.

I like this photo because it shows the old painting on the wall behind the modern baptismal font.

The next morning we were out looking for a newspaper and came across another old motorcycle with sidecar.  It was in exactly the same spot as the one we saw the day before!

After breakfast at our hotel we headed off for Como and the concours d'elegance. The road along the lake reminded me of Chuckanut Drive or the shores of Lake Tahoe. The road climbed and fell as we passed through a number of small towns. There was a lot of traffic on the road at 9 in the morning. Most of it was motorcycles and cyclists. The latter came by in huge packs.

I will do another post, probably tomorrow, on the concours and all the lovely classic cars.

Volterra, City of Alabaster

 Yesterday we drove to Volterra. The ancient town (Villanovan, Etruscan, Roman, etc.) is located about two hours south of Capannori and Lucca. We avoided the autostrada and meandered there through the countryside, first through the Compitese and then through the Colline Pisani to Volterra which rises 1,800 ft. above the valley floor.  We were a good ways up the hill when I took this picture. You can barely see the walls of the fort towering up above the new town below.

We found a parking place outside the walls and right next to the parcheggio was an archaeological site. It contains the remains of a Roman amphitheater and baths. Here you can see the town walls in the upper right hand portion of the picture.

This picture was taken from the top of the wall referenced in the previous picture. You can see the remains of the seating and the theater itself. Behind the large structure were the baths.

They have been working on the site since the 1950s. This portion is quite spectacular.

Here you can see the Pisan Hills stretching away to the north beyond the town.

We arrived in Volterra at about 1o'clock. Here is a picture of a father and daughter going home from school. Most children get out at 12:30 and it is common for a parent or grandparent to meet them at the school building and escort them home. You often see the adult carrying the child's backpack. If you look closely you can also see the royal blue smock the girl is wearing.  All preschool and elementary school students wear a smock to school, usually black or blue for boys and pink or blue for girls. The schools must decide the colors because it varies.

There were lots of interesting storefronts in Volterra. Many of them sold alabaster sculptures and Etruscan inspired jewelry. There were also quite a few wine shops.

We walked by this open door. Beyond it you can see the old peeling frescoes on the wall of the entry. The exterior doors were beautifully varnished but inside it looked a little "shabby chic."

This florist shop had a beautiful array of colorful plants outside. If you enlarge the photo you can see that the object in the center is a carefully cross stitched piece with the name and birth date of a baby girl. This is an elaborate version of an Italian birth announcement. On one building we saw white painted branches tied with blue ribbons indicating a new baby boy lived there.

This shop sells all sorts of peppers and pepper infused oils and other products.

Most of the streets in Volterra are fairly narrow, medieval lanes. However, here the buildings opened up into a broad piazza. The torture museum is located here. We passed on visiting it.

We had lunch at a bar not far from the above piazza and then wandered around the Volterra streets some more. It was a beautiful day, the first really hot day we have had.  We came across this building that I later read was the inspiration for most Tuscan town halls including the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. You can see all the plaques on the wall, mostly coats of arms of different sorts.

Here is a closer look at two of the most elaborate medallions. I like the Della Robbia style wreaths of painted terra cotta leaves and fruit.

We found the Volterra duomo (cathedral) which is tucked in behind the town hall. It was quite elaborate inside and had several wonderful paintings from the 1500s. This is an Annunciation surrounded by smaller scenes painted on wooden plaques.

This picture is a lovely scene of Mary and Jesus surrounded by the household women. It is wonderfully lifelike and has interesting details such as a cat in the lower right hand corner.

This is the front of the duomo. It is pretty plain compared to some churches in Tuscany (e.g. Pisa). However, Volterra produced six of the early popes including St. Linus who was the second pope after St. Peter.

Here is a view of the countryside to the south. Volterra is built up on a knob of sandy soil and over the centuries erosion has been a problem. Nonetheless it towers over the surrounding countryside and can be seen from many miles away. Once up in the town the wind seems to always be blowing. It was a bit hazy yesterday but on a really clear day the views must be even more stunning.

Here is an example of one of the streets in Volterra. This road is rather wide because it leads up from one of the original city gates.

Many of the streets in Volterra are much narrower with buildings curving this way and that and seeming to almost touch one another in places.

Almost since we arrived the air has constantly been filled with floating bits of fluff. Some days it looks almost like it is snowing. Here is a doormat in Volterra that had collected quite a pile of the fluffy tree debris.

Spring is poppy season in Italy and you see thick bunches of bright red blossoms along the roads in many places. I tried to take a photo as we were moving but this is the best I got. I read that poppy seeds can last in the ground for hundreds of years and grow when the soil is disturbed. That is apparently why poppies became the symbol of World War I in France and Britain. During the war the bombing and digging of the trenches disturbed lots of seeds so many of the fields sprouted masses of poppies in the wake of the battles. That may also explain why so many poppies grow along the roadside here. The weed whackers cut into the earth as they cut the grass thus disturbing the poppy seeds and promoting growth.

It was difficult to take a photo that really showed the panorama from Volterra. So I took the following video. The voices you hear are two men who were chatting nearby.

Although yesterday was beautiful today has been mixed. It started out sunny and warm then became overcast and then we had a rip roaring thunder and lightening storm with strong winds and masses of rain. Now the clouds are thinning and it is getting sunny again. It's a good thing because shortly I am heading off to do a Friday marcia with Mary. We will meet Dom and Orlando later for dinner.

This weekend we are going to Lake Como for a Concours d'Elegance--juried classic car show. Lots of photos and a post about that early next week.

America's Cup World Series at Venezia

As advertised, on Friday we went to Venice to see the America's Cup World Series. This is a warm-up series for the actual America's Cup that will be contested in San Francisco in 2013. The AC World Series held regattas in San Diego, Plymouth UK, and Portugal in the fall of 2011. This spring and summer they are racing in Naples and Venice Italy before going on to two rounds in San Francisco. The boats they are using are the AC45 catamarans with a crew of five. In the 2013 America's Cup regatta the teams will be racing on 72 ft. catamarans.

We left Capannori at about 8 am on Friday. In spite of rain being forecast the day was mostly sunny and warm. It did get a little overcast in Venice and the wind sitting on the Riva was nippy but for the most part it was perfect weather.

We arrived at Tronchetto (the big Venice parking garage) at about 11:30 and promptly caught the vaporetto (water bus) to Piazza San Marco. There was a bit of sticker shock as the price of a one-way ride has gone up to Euros 7. Yikes! However, it would have taken us a good hour to hoof it so we paid to play.

The ride up the Grand Canal was actually very nice. Dom and I managed window seats inside so we had a good view of the palazzi as we trundled along.

Even before we got to Piazza San Marco we knew the America's Cup was quite a draw. There were a number of people on the vaporetto heading for the venue. It was obvious as we got disembarked that we were in the right place.

Ninety percent of the people who visit Venice do so as day trippers. There were a LOT of them on Friday in Piazza San Marco!

The headquarters for the Venice regatta is the Arsenale--the old Venetian ship building yards that were later property of the Italian Navy. Most recently parts of it have been used for the Venice Biennale Arts Festival. For as long as we have been coming to Venice the public has not had much access inside the Arsenale complex. I was looking forward to that as much as the sailboat racing.

The complex is actually a good walk from Piazza San Marco but the vaporetti were not running that far because the race course was right out front. We weaved our way through the tourists (we have met the enemy and he is us!) and scoped out the race course at the same time. Amazingly they were racing right up to the pavement at the water's edge. Even an hour or two before the racing was set to begin, people were sitting on the edge of the pavement waiting.

Once inside the Arsenale we made our way to the darsena nuova, the big basin inside the complex. This is where the AC45 boats were anchored. The boats are all one design with the same equipment on each so the teams cannot do much to them. Thus, although there were "team bases" apparently not much went on at them.

Here is Dom standing in front of the darsena nuova and the Red Bull boat we never saw out racing.

Here is the Swedish boat and both US/Oracle boats. All the team flags are part of the wing so it is easy to identify who is who.

After we walked around the complex the boats started heading out for the start of racing at about 2:15 pm. This is one of the two Oracle boats being towed out.

There were a lot of interesting things inside the Arsenale besides the America's Cup boats. This sub seams to have ended up high and dry!

Back out on the Riva the crowds were gathering. Dom and I bought a couple of panini and water and found a spot where it was not too crowded. This shot is of one of the more crowded sections.

There are a lot of boats out on the water in addition to the catamarans. There were chase boats for each team, medical boats, rescue boats, officials and a couple of local police jets ski boats. They reminded me of the Seattle Police Department jet skis out on Lake Union in the summer.

At every kind of racing we have ever attended almost immediately you start talking to the people around you. We met a couple from Chicago and their friend from New Zealand. Apparently red socks on one's hands is a customary good luck gesture for the NZ boat.

The start line was actually out of sight from where we were, around to the left in this photos.  Soon after the start the boats came charging towards us.

They rapidly got closer and closer, tacking their way up the canal.

The only time I have been closer to boats racing was when I was actually on a yacht in the regatta!

There were two Italy/Prada boats--Barracuda and Piranha. Not sure which this is but each of them won one of the two races we watched.

Eventually the boats reached the line between San Giorgio Maggiore and Piazza San Marco where they turned and went back. They raced five legs total and the races took no more than about half an hour each.

Here is a closer look at one of the US/Oracle boats. They did not do very well on Friday. Each of the two came in almost dead last in the races we watched. Nonetheless, I looked at the overall regatta standings and the Oracle boats are 1 and 2 while the Italy/Prada boats are last through yesterday's races.

I like this photo with the boats in front of San Giorgio Maggiore and the helicopter hovering in the upper left hand corner. There were three helicopters covering the racing.

The two Oracle boats and the two Prada boats! Just beyond them you can see the small spectator boats. They did a good job of designating the far side of the course. Beyond them were anchored larger boats--mostly sailing yachts.

Here we have one boat going upwind while the Prada boat is going downwind. In both races we watched the Italy/Prada boats sailed away from the rest of the fleet. The boat going upwind is probably the China boat that came in last in both races.

Here is one of the Prada boats getting ready to cross the finish line. The Campanile and the Palazzo Ducale can be seen on the right side of the photo. The races were a great juxtaposition of the ultra-modern racing catamarans with the palaces and churches financed by the trade wealth of one of the sailing superpowers of the Renaissance.

Here is the chase boat for the Oracle teams. There were some pretty ritzy inflatables out on the water.

Just to prove I was really there I had Dom take my picture!

Here is a short video of the boats in action.

Here are a couple of pictures of old buildings in Venice just because I liked them.

Lately, Dom has had a thing about laundry hanging outside. You do not see as much of it outside here in Capannori. This is a good example of what he expects to see.

Early this morning there was a big earthquake north of us in the Emilia Romagna region. We drove right through that area on Friday. The quake registered 6.0 and even though we are at least 100 miles from the epicenter it still woke us up at 4:04 am. Up here on the sixth floor things wiggled around quite a bit! Our thoughts are with the people who have lost lives, homes, businesses, jobs, churches and historic buildings to quake damage.