Northern Italy |
 Como was a lovely little city, clean and perfect, in a cupped hand of Alpine mountains at the southern end of the narrow, thirty-mile lake of the same name ... It was perfect. Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There
The overnight train from Salzburg to Milan was actually bearable. Strange and loud, but bearable. I never knew six people could sleep stacked like pancakes in a room the approximate size of a duck's anus, but apparently it can be done on trains in Europe.
We're sitting beside the stunning Lake Como. Green mountains and red rooftops, like Firenze, but surrounding a huge lake which I swear is the color of the Emerald City.  The funiculare up to the top of a mountain was beautiful, and I stood against the railing, looking out and pondering my future.
 We went on a boat ride, ate lunch on a sidewalk overlooking the lake and mountains, and then went climbing up a stony path, in kind of a labyrinth of flowering window ledges, colorful tall houses, and secret stairways.
The hostel here is certainly no YoHo, but it's clean if anti-social. We're headed to bed tonight and then back to Florence tomorrow. Anna is now fully engrossed in Garpness and is forcing me to read the hostel's copy of John Jakes's Heaven and Hell. How thrilling. We are so bloody tired. But feeling happy and at peace.
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