Yesterday we decided to jump in the car and drive up to St Moritz which is about 70 miles to the northeast through the Alps.  The day was supposed to be sunny and quite pleasent and since all the boats in town were reserved (see yesterday’s post) we had a day to kill.  To say we were unprepared for many of the things we saw and experiences we had would be an understatement.  Enjoy the photos as we post a bit of what we saw.  Start at the bottom photo and view upwards to follow the day.

This is a grab from Google Earth showing just a teeny tiny bit of some of the switch backs on the drive.

Dear God thank you for letting me survive the drive.

The driver enjoying a little road side break.

Even the Italian bees are stylin’!! I think those are Armani sun glasses.

Val Verde, Switzerland southwest of St Moritz.

I promise. No more door latch pictures. Maybe….

The spectacular scenery of the Alps.

Those Swiss chicks are darn cute!!

Love the texture of the weathered wood and the iron work on the hardware.

The “new water well”.

This house dated to the late 1700’s.

I know the Swiss are supposed to be neat fanatics but I found one of those red geraniums that needed dead heading and there were spots of dirt on the road!!

Honey…. could you pleeeease run down and get me another bucket of water???

The lower portion of the mountain pass we drove up through. Breathtaking switchback turns and fantastic bedrock outcrops. Laura’s hand grip is indelibly left on the interior door handle!

For Sale: Simple country home, Stone construction, Wood heat, Backyard outdoor shower!

Monday was a glorious day of 85 degrees sunshine filled skies.  We decided to pack a little picnic lunch of bread, cheese, honey, pesto, salami, and wine and go down into town to rent a boat for the afternoon so we could tour the lake and maybe take a dip.  Laura and  I agree that it was pretty much the best day ever.

Lunch is served. No fancy linen table clothes,

I have always LOVED wooden power boats! This was not our rental and thank god it wasn’t for sale either. Could it have been more right for me??

The town of Menaggio is about 15 minutes north along the west coast of the lake. It is just a bit more ‘touristifed’ than we were looking for as a base but is certainly a wonderful place to visit.

These two young ladies are waiting for one of the pedestrian ferry boats that service the lake and can take you “town hopping” throughout the day. Lunch here, wine over there, afternoon gelato down the shore, dinner over in Belaggio, and home after dark. Sign me up!!

This place didn’t even make the guide book. Accesible by boat or foot brifge only. No nosey neighbors and darn little grass to worry about.

The upstairs party plaza has a wonderful view in both direction up and down the lake.

The side patio for lunch and sunbathing.

This little bungalow had wonderfully sculpted gardens and the covered porch or loggia, that was spectacular.  What a place for a party!

The drive up from Milano was surprisingly quick, only about one hour once we made it to the autostrade. Hazy skies had obscured the sightof the northern mountains since our arrival here, so we had yet to see them,but as we got closer they materialized out of the haze, and stood beckoning usto our first “home” in Italy.

Suddenly the southern end of Lake Como was next to us, andwe exited on to a mountainside road that wound and curved through tunnels andnarrow villages until we reached Argegno. Our village sits directly at the edgeof the lake, with a tiny town center consisting of a hotel, 3 restaurants, agelato shop and a wine bar (enoteca) clustered around a little piazza with amodern fountain in the middle. Of course everything is open to the strikinglybeautiful view of Lake Como and it’s bordering mountains to the east.

The village was bustling on a Saturday, in fact the wholeLake Como area is still very busy with tourists (international and local)especially with the weather being so warm and sunny. We met David, the Irishbusinessman who owns our apartment and he led us up the hill to get us settledinto our apartment.

We’ve now had 2 full days to settle in. The apartment istidy and comfortable, and the view is truly fabulous. The down side is it isalso quite noisy, as the road into town is below us, about 200 feet below, andthere has also been significant boat noise. In photos the view evokes peace andquiet, but sitting on our balcony is more like maybe a midtown Manhattan highrise with regard to “quiet”, especially with weekend traffic. This adventuredoes have its challenges: where to buy items like ant spray, or washcloths, anddo they even have skim milk in Italy?? How to turn around the car in our narrowsloping driveway without backing into the rock wall behind or banging into ourneighbor’s patio railing?

The small stream that splits the town.

On the plus side, we spend day and night with the windowsthrown wide open, and blessedly dry, mild fresh air. We have befriended thelittle dog who lives up the driveway, and he now comes down and visits us eachmorning, laying outside our patio gate until we come out to give him a pet. Thewalk down to the village is welcome-ly strenuous: up a steep driveway from ourplace, down the street to a pedestrian stairway, down about 50 stairs to aseriously steep cobblestone lane which winds on down to the village piazzetta. It takes maybe 6 or 7 minutes. We have explored the village a little bit and it is completely charming…a mazeof narrow walkways amongst the old buildings with little tunnels and bridgesand passages. There is a tiny bakery, a produce stall, and a sundries storealso tucked back among those winding lanes. One restaurant owner now greets usby name (thanks to an introduction by David) and has graciously agreed to letme try to communicate with him in my very tortured Italian

There are well over a hundred of these scuptures 40 feet above your head along the street level on all four sides.

More of Milan

Waaay up near the top as we walk on the roof a small portion of the wall details.

After being in a hurry to get something on the blog we decided to post just a few photos of some of what we were able to see and enjoy an share with you to better convey the city and the experience.

Milan Duomo Exterior

Alive and Well

It is Monday morning, we have left Milan, and I am sitting in our apartment in the small town of Argengno on the western shore of Lake Como.  That is pronounced Ar jen yo.  It is a wonderful landscape scenery of a narrow mountain valley with small towns of melon colored houses with red tile roofs tucked into the shoreline.  Quite a change from the big city of Milan.

We arrived in Milan on Wednesday evening with no problems for the flight, all the luggage accounted for, picked up a rather surprisingly roomy rental car and with the handy iPhone map app made it to the beautiful and trendy Baglioni Hotel.  We deposited out bags into the quite snug room and even though it was 10 at night headed out for some wandering, wine and a bite to eat.  The Hotel is in the middle of “the Shopping District” which is street after street of every clothing store and designer boutique you could imagine.  We noticed that there were workers preparing and changing displays in a number of store front windows and thought it odd for such a time of day to still be at it.   Thursday started with a self- guided tour of the Duomo cathedral in the heart of the city and just a short quarter mile or so walk away.  What an amazingly designed and decorated church.  Supposedly the second largest after Saint Peters in Rome the interior is impressive but dark, but it is rather the exterior that is the most impressive feature.   I am certain that there is a statistic some place that could tell me the correct count but there are literally hundreds of carved marble statues of the Who’s Who in the Catholic religion.  Toss in a few dozen Popes, a hundred or so gargoyles, and a steady heap of angels, lots and lots of fancy scroll work and columns and it is stunning to think of the amount of human labor that the building has consumed over the centuries.  Napoleon was crowned king of Italy here and ordered that the exterior be designed and work begun.   The balance of the daylight hours we walked through the gorgeous Galleria, another landmark of Milan, found the La Scala theater where we will be attending the opera in a few weeks and then headed back to the hotel to freshen up for the evening.  It is in the upper 80s and a day of walking requires a fresh shirt for the evening.

Thursday evening we found out why the window workers had been so busy.  It was Vogue’s Fashion Evening in Milan.  All the stores stay open late just this one night and the place was electric with throngs of people, fashion models handing out flyers, club dance music spilling out of stores and even a live window model at an upscale lingerie store!  Did I ever say how much I like window shopping???!!  There were people everywhere and Laura and I smartly found a small table with a great view, ordered a bottle of wine, surprised?, and relaxed and watch the street scene go by.  We were very impressed that even though there were easily 30,000 people out on the street the scene was amazingly well behaved and very friendly.

Friday we spent most of the morning popping into a few churches on our way across town to the Sforza castle and mid-day pizza and wine stop.  We ‘shopped’ for a hotel for our opera return trip and then back to the hotel to organize for the Saturday departure to begin the stay up at Lake Como and settle into one spot for 5 weeks.

Yeah! Visited the consulate’s office this morning, hopefully for the last time in my LIFE, and was able to retrieve our passports and supporting documents with no appointment and no problem. Even got a refund of our application fees.

With our passports in hand, we are on our way (next Tuesday). Let the adventure begin!

We left you all hanging on the outcome of our visa application. In spite of all our best efforts to be thoroughly prepared, our meeting with the visa officer at the consulate’s office did not go well, and our application was deemed “insufficient”. The problem was our rental contract, which was between us and a Houston friend for his home in Sicily. We had downloaded a generic rental agreement, filled in our specifics, and this was signed and dated by all parties. Perfectly legal and legitimate in the United States.  But the visa officer wanted us to provide an Italian contract, registered and notarized in Italy.

Um, what??????  None of the parties are in Italy, so how are we supposed to do that? Just all fly over to Italy for a day and sign a contract there? There was a period of hope when we thought we might be able to have our contract validated at the home of the Consul General here in Houston, but that did not happen either.

We are left with few choices. It’s too late to try to adopt an Italian child, or to enroll in school there. Rather, we have decided to withdraw our visa applications and go to Italy anyway. We will try to stay under the radar with only our passports. Italy has a well established pattern of relaxed immigration enforcement, especially when you are American tourists, so odds are they won’t even notice we are there. If worse comes to worse and they limit us to ninety days, we’ll bounce out of Italy for a few weeks, to a non-Schengen country (Croatia is supposed to be beautiful!), and then bounce back in time to be with the girls for Christmas back in Italy. Now the only hurdle left is to get our passports back from the consulate’s office: How hard could that be? I don’t dare even ask.

Not the charge card thing.  In the ‘olden days’ you could travel much easier for extended stays.  Your passport would allow you a 90 day stay and it was as simple as crossing the border, going to Switzerland for a day, and come back for another 90 days!  Ta Da!   Simple.  Easy.  Well….not so much any more.  That ‘come and go’ loophole for long vacations is a thing of the past.  You can only travel anywhere in Europe  and across any border for 90 days.  Then you have to leave for 90 days before you can come back.  This is all a result of the Schengen Agreement.  This has nothing to do with anything Chinese.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

It is now necessary to procure an ‘Elective Residence’ Visa for stay longer than 90 days.  OK this shouldn’t be too difficult.  Right?  Just try finding out exactly what is needed in order to apply.  It would be infinitely helpful if there were a concise list of requirements.  No.  Way to easy.  Laura has been frantic in her search and we believe we have everything needed for our appointment this Friday.  You need to have your airlines tickets purchased for a 6 month stay.  So there will be a change fee coming since we are only going for 4 months!  You have to have proof of where you are going to be staying for 6 months.  Booked reservations with proof of payment.  So much for being foot loose and playing it by ear.  Passport photos.  You have to present proof that you can afford to be there for 6 months and not be looking for a job while in Italy.  Bank statements and letters.  So much for my carpentry and table waiting skills.  We also went so far as to get fingerprinted and an FBI criminal search to prove we are good people.  (Please no rebuttals)   So, crossing our fingers we will apply and have been assured that the two weeks before we leave will be enough time to get the Visa even though the Italian Consulate website says it takes 4 weeks.  Wish us luck in this first hurdle.

Not the charge card thing.  In the ‘olden days’ you could travel much easier for extended stays.  Your passport would allow you a 90 day stay and it was as simple as crossing the border, going to Switzerland for a day, and come back for another 90 days!  Ta Da!   Simple.  Easy.  Well….not so much any more.  That ‘come and go’ loophole for long vacations is a thing of the past.  You can only travel anywhere in Europe  and across any border for 90 days.  Then you have to leave for 90 days before you can come back.  This is all a result of the Schengen Agreement.  This has nothing to do with anything Chinese.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

It is now necessary to procure an ‘Elective Residence’ Visa for stay longer than 90 days.  OK this shouldn’t be too difficult.  Right?  Just try finding out exactly what is needed in order to apply.  It would be infinitely helpful if there were a concise list of requirements.  No.  Way to easy.  Laura has been frantic in her search and we believe we have everything needed for our appointment this Friday.  You need to have your airlines tickets purchased for a 6 month stay.  So there will be a change fee coming since we are only going for 4 months!  You have to have proof of where you are going to be staying for 6 months.  Booked reservations with proof of payment.  So much for being foot loose and playing it by ear.  Passport photos.  You have to present proof that you can afford to be there for 6 months and not be looking for a job while in Italy.  Bank statements and letters.  So much for my carpentry and table waiting skills.  We also went so far as to get fingerprinted and an FBI criminal search to prove we are good people.  (Please no rebuttals)   So, crossing our fingers we will apply and have been assured that the two weeks before we leave will be enough time to get the Visa even though the Italian Consulate website says it takes 4 weeks.  Wish us luck in this first hurdle.