On any given week-or-longer trip, my last full day practically never features formal targets on the itinerary. I prefer to leave that day for either catching up on a must-see that was not accessible earlier in the trip or simply for a bit of aimless wandering around a big city. There is usually no new exploration – the day is for winding down and pretending that I am not a tourist in a foreign land.
So, the World Heritage properties that did not survive the original itinerary cut would not do. Nor would additional components of the sites explored earlier in the trip (just for the sake of a formal account, I could go and visit Barolo for Piedmont Vineyards, or Castelserpio for Longobards, or any of Varese, Ghiffa, Ossuccio, or Serralunga di Crea for Sacri Monti).
Leaving the car in its parked location and walking around Milan would technically do – and it would certainly compensate a little for the dreary-weather walkabout earlier in the week – but Milan, in general, is not on the same plane as other great European cities with respect to pleasant perambulation; half a day in the afternoon felt more than a sufficient allocation of time.
The actual decision of what exactly the last day of the trip may entail is normally not due until the evening prior. As I was mulling over my options during dinner that night, it occurred to me that it had been over a dozen years since I last visited Lake Como. “The pearl” of the lake, Bellagio, located at the point where Lake Como’s two legs split apart, is not farther away from Milan than any of the aforementioned World Heritage properties. I decided that a few morning hours reacquainting myself with the lake was exactly what the moment called for.
I did not leave my camera behind, nor did I take a lot of pictures, though. You can call it “finding the balance between being a tourist and pretending not to be one”.
The lakefront quay is the main visual highlight of Bellagio. Stately hotels on one side, views over the lake on the other.
Across the lake on its western shore is the village of Cadenabbia, connected to Bellagio via a ferry route that we’ve taken several times during our past stay on Lake Como. (The boats in the frame are not ferries, in case I need to state the obvious.)
On the left edge of that photo above, you can just see Villa Carlotta, which featured a couple of times in the minimalistic sampler collection of shots from that stay in 2013.
The waterfront is connected to the upper part of the center of Bellagio via several stairways. The main commercial street at the top end is bookended on one side by the prosaically named Piazza della Chiesa.
Basilica of St. Giacomo, as is frequently true for provincial churches, is relatively plain on the outside but possesses eye-catching art and decorative details inside.
A few glances along the aforementioned main commercial drag, Via Giuseppe Garibaldi…
… and one of the staircases, Salita Serbelloni…
After a couple of hours of walking around, stepping into various shops, and stopping for coffee, I started back towards Milan. In the hamlet of Visgnola, a minute or two out of Bellagio, a parking pocket on the main road allowed me to throw a few glances at the “outskirts” of the village from an elevated position.
I made one other stop along the way where I could walk to a beach for a few photos of the mountain ranges surrounding Lake Como, featuring villages of Mandello del Lario and Olcio on the eastern shore, as well as the Bellagio promontory to the north.
I returned to Milan in the early afternoon and made good on that bit of walking around the city center. Without my camera this time.
But that was not the end of the trip yet. My flight was leaving in the afternoon the next day, and a few hours in the morning could certainly be allocated to seeing something else.