The Pellegrinos do Italy: Day one and a half

As of now, we've been up over 30 hours ... and after my moonlight Amaretto, I suspect I'll crash shortly.

Rick and Nancy got us to Orlando (airport) early. I'm the type that likes to be at the airport on the early side so that was fine with me. We flew Lufthansa for the first time. Our 747 had two departure gates. About 20 minutes before departure, the area was a mob scene. Lou wanted to know how they expected to lad everyone and take off in such a short period of time. But hey, it's Lufthansa and at our departure time, our very full flight was taxiing down the runway. My middle seat was godawful and I believe that was a big reason why I didn't sleep. We landed in Frankfurt at our gate arrival time. Then we taxied forever to get to our gate.

Frankfurt Airport is huge. I believe it's the fourth or fifth busiest in the world. I think we had to walk about 2 miles to get to the departure gate for our next flight. Once they were ready to board, they put us on a bus that probably took us three or four miles further away. We climbed steps from the tarmac and off we went. Beautiful views of the Alps from my window seat (I gave Lou the center seat for this short flight), although we were on the wrong side for the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc. Right on schedule, we landed in Milan. I suppose we didn't have to go through immigration in Milan because we'd gone through a passport control of sorts in Frankfurt.

View of the Alps

.We stopped at an ATM to get some euros, we picked up our car... an adorable white and red Fiat 500 convertible, we set our rental TomTom destination to our first hotel and we hit the road. We opted for "no tolls" and we were on our way. Because we weren't on major highways, it became problematic to find a bathroom stop for Lou. Where did we end up stopping? At Fuddruckers naturally. Where the Coca Cola light cost over €3! Insane!

Our first stop is Tremezzina, overlooking Lake Como. Some of the narrow twisty roads were pretty hair-raising but Lou got us here safe and sound. We're staying at La Perla and first impressions are good. We're lucky enough to have a room with a view.

the view from our balcony

I'd done all this research on Trip Advisor and had selected a highly rated pizzeria within walking distance for our first dinner. I did a screen capture of walking directions from my phone, very difficult to follow without street signs, and while we enjoyed a lovely passeggiata, we never found the pizzeria.

Hard to follow directions without live GPS

Quite the walkway to walk down - and back up! Where is that pizzeria?

We ended up at a small restaurant, Bar Rana, where we enjoyed local specialties sitting on a balcony overlooking the lake, watching the moon rise. We walked back to La Perla and am ready for bed.