Lago di Como

As soon as I found out I was definitely coming to Milan I was super excited at the prospect of having so many places to visit. I’ve never been to Italy before and the first thing on my shopping list was of course a travel guide. I don't think you can beat a travel guide, unless you have a native friend, then I’ll let you off. I usually go with the pocket size ones, but that would mean I would need about 15 different ones, so I went with the BIG one. When I say big one, I mean you have to study it before you go, or tear the pages out because there is no way that you can carry around this bad boy all day. At 974 pages exactly it’s one hell of a travel guide. 

The first place on my list was Lake Como or as they say in Italian Lago di Como. My roommate came with me and we were all organised; trains had been booked, my travel guide had been read and our bags had been packed. We arrived in good time, half asleep I might add but we were ready and raring to go! Little did I know that in Italy they leave it 5 minutes before you are due to depart, before announcing which platform the train will arrive on. It’s really very generous of them really. Needless to say we were definitely not prepared for that!

A quick sprint later and after eventually finding the train platform, we successfully made it on the train, and an hour and a half later we were in Como. First stop - the tourist information point of course! If there is one thing that we have learnt since being here, is that we have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever! The lady, thankfully spoke English and gave us a map, but a map really never helps, we still always manage to go in the wrong direction. However, this time, we cleverly followed the crowd of people that similarly got off the same train and thankfully this time we didn't get lost. 

The town of Como I discovered is only one of the most picturesque places ever! It's a sea of terracotta roofs and brightly painted houses and despite the lack of sunshine, it was still one of the most beautiful places I've visited. The medieval town is a complete mixture of quirky Italian stores and touristic restaurants and bars. The town was covered in shops selling Como silk in everything from ties, to scarves, to garments that literally cost an arm and leg. Of course not considering the fact that shops shut on a Sunday, they looked beautiful from what I could see through the shop windows. Despite some of the shops being closed, it was probably the perfect time to visit such a touristic place. 

Since we had made it this far, we had to do something touristy. So we decided to cable car Como-Brunate. It was well worth it, the views were amazing, and when we saw how steep the hill was we were glad to have taken the cable car, thats for sure! There was a bit of fog which was a shame, but the views were outstanding nonetheless. I was actually surprised at how big Como is. All you could see were row upon row of terracotta roof tiles, it looked exactly how I’d imagined it. 

Lake Como was our first stop, I wonder where we will go next…….