Italy travelog: the lazy way out

I really wanted to do a post about my trip to Italy much sooner than this. But between catching up at work and Anna already doing a good job of posting about our trip, I've not had the time or motivation to do a huge post about it. Boo me; I know.

Lake Como

Anna posted again about it today. There are some good pictures of our time around Lake Como, Verona, Lugano, and Venice. Please check out her post here. There are also other posts here, here, and here.

Milan

Anna has done a good job of hitting the highlights. Here is what I would add:

She notes that my favorite part of the trip was the water taxi into Venice. That was pretty cool, for sure. I also liked the old Castle of Vezio that we toured.

The flights there and back were long. I had never been on a 10-hour flight before. While it was worth it, it took a toll. Also, missing our connecting flight from New York to Milan was not fun. It required us crossing our fingers really hard to ensure that as standby's we got on the next flight to Rome three hours later, where we would then fly to Milan. That's what happened and we ended up in Lake Como about half a day later than we had planned.

When the food was good, it was great. I tried fresh pasta, all kinds of pizza, and heaps of gelato.

Venice

The only time I feared for my safety was in the train station at Milan on our way home from Venice. We looked very much like vulnerable tourists with all of our luggage and no Italian speaking skills. I'm pretty sure the guy that helped us at the ticket machine was a classic pick pocket, but I kept my eyes on him as much as he on us. I was glad to be done with the train travel.

If you want more specific stories I'll encourage you again to check out Anna's blog posts, or feel free to email me and ask any question to aljmac@gmail.com.