Varenna - Day 5

Today was another day of exploring. Rick read that the shortest river in Italy was in the next village over. The river is called Fiumelatte (River of Milk) and the town is named after it. The walk to the town was along the shore of Lake Como, so again every few feet there was a place for a photo. There were some amazing villas. The feel was very Big Sur/Bay Area with the same kinds of trees.

When we got to the village of Fiumelatte, we saw where the little river dives into the lake and it was rushing down so hard it did look like milk. Then Rick told me his goal was to climb to the river's source about 800 ft. above us and as the brochure told us, a gradient of 36 degrees. Not being so good at picturing distance and not even thinking about gradient, I reluctantly agreed to see the source with him. Oy vey! I think it was really a 90 degree angle some of the time plus I was shlepping my bag with water, my shawl, and about two tons of crap.

Needless to say, when I got up there, I wasn't the happiest of hikers. It was pretty though. I'm including a picture of Rick when he triumphantly reached the top and me striking a KROG pose. For those of you who don't know it, I'm really not the outdoorsy type. In fact many years ago my friends Mary and Jeanie gave me the nickname, Karen Rowinsky Outdoor Girl (hence the KROG initials) as a joke. So whenever I find myself in an uncharacteristically nature-like situation I have to memorialize it!

I hate to admit it but I did enjoy having done the hike. The way down was at a very gentle angle and I'm still confused as to why we couldn't go up and down the same way!

When we got back to our village (2 hours later) we rewarded ourselves with a lovely lunch facing the lake. My sister-in-law, Monica, who is a very talented food writer (try out her blog at http://spitanddrive.blogspot.com/2010/10/if-you-hang-out-at-table-long-enough.html) has asked that I include some pictures of the food we are eating. So here's another pizza for you! We meet up with our traveling partners tomorrow so I may start to vary my diet a little and I'll take pictures of their food which will be a lot more interesting than mine.

We ended our day with an evening ferry ride across the lake to Bellagio for dinner. It's a more commercial village than Varenna but by the time we got there most of the shops were closed. We had dinner at a lakeside restaurant. I actually had spaghetti carbonara but forgot to photograph it. Here is a picture of the ferry docking in Varenna. Now it's time to get ready for the next leg of our trip tomorrow. We're taking a train to Venice. Buona sera!