Our good friend Warner was in charge of the itinerary for our last day in Como. He talked with staff at the desk of the Palace Hotel, where we were staying, and found a boat service that would take us around the lower part of Lake Como in an hour. He also arranged for us to have the boat drop us at Villa D’Este in Cernobbio, a short distance up the lake from our hotel. He investigated the Funicular train that goes up the side of the mountain that overlooks the city. We learned the entrance was very close to where the ferry that would return us from Cernobbio dropped us. That was Warner’s day and he outdid himself.
The tour of the lake in a small wooden inboard motor boat was very different than taking the ferry up to Bellagio. We were very close to the water and to the shore most of the trip. The driver, a young woman, stopped the boat and told us about the unique aspects of various villas, including George Clooney’s compound. She corrected an earlier guide’s description, telling us there were in fact four properties together. She added that while George bought the largest parcel in 2003 for nine million Euros, the whole compound is now worth north of thirty. The driver, who lives in the next village over, told us George has been seen frequently in the village, has been very generous to the people there who suffered from landslides off the mountain, and is generally only there in the summer.
There were other interesting properties, including a very old structure that has a waterfall flowing out of the lower level of the building, but it runs for six hours, stops for six hours and then starts up again. It has been this way for hundreds of years, but no one knows why. Another property is that of the Apple executive in charge of Europe. He built an elevator to reach the lakeside villa from the road above. Another built a funicular train like the one in the village, although it too just goes from the road above down to the lakeside property.
Villa D’Este was a whole different experience. One of the largest properties on the lake, it is located in Cernobbio, a pleasant little village. The main property goes back to the fifteenth century when it was a seminary and later a convent. In the early nineteenth century the estranged wife of King George IV, the one after the mad King George of American Revolutionary War fame, bought the villa and completely rebuilt it. For some reason nothing ever changes with the English monarchy. The future George IV was already illegally married at age twenty when he legally married Caroline. They had a daughter and he sent her away when it was not a son. They never reconciled, although she became Queen for about three weeks, when George III died and her husband took the throne. Why she died at that time was unknown. But much of the scandal of the age was her husband trying to get the scoop on whom his legal wife, Caroline, was sleeping with at that moment. It was thought to be her constant companion and servant.
The villa consists of several buildings, a Versailles like garden and the oldest floating swimming pool on the lake, with the original being built in the 1960s. Lunch was out on the terrace and very pleasant, although more snacks than a real lunch. But a bottle of prosecco went down very nicely in the warm spring sunshine and gentle breeze.
We ended our stay in Como riding the funicular train up to the top of the mountain for spectacular views, spent the remaining hours shopping in the old town, where we found an incredible wine shop (Enoteca Wine Bar Da Gigi), where we learned that golden grappa is aged in wooden barrels like wine and turns a golden color. Aged grappa does not taste like gasoline, rather Warner described it like a tequila.
We returned to Il Pacchero 2.0, an incredible restaurant outside the old city, for three appetizers, two made with Burrata cheese and one the truffle phyllo ball we found scrumptious on our first visit. We tried two different wines this evening, one an Italian Ripasso, like an Amarone, but a lighter version that reuses Amarone skins. The other wine was a Petite Verdot, which was very nice.
It was time to say good-bye to Como, an experience we will remember.
