Como to Lucera

Today we have no plans so I finally have some time to get caught up on some blogging!

First, some more photos and rambling about Como. We stayed at the Albergo del Duca, which is on the small Piazza Mazzini in the old town. It was an excellent location, only a few minutes from the lake and from the cathedral. The downside is that it was in the pedestrianized district so our sat-nav only brought us to the closest plaza that allowed cars. That meant I had to hop out and ask a man at a magazine stand for directions. Fortunately I remembered how to say "where is" in Italian by the time I got there, but after he gave me the directions I said Danke instead of Grazie. It has been a bit of an adjustment to change our language over!


Hotel Albergo del Duca

We saw other hotels named Albergo-Something and we really wondered who this guy is, until I looked it up in my phrase book and discovered it means "hotel." Oops. Our hosts spoke little English but were very nice and helpful. We were able to park our car in a nice little courtyard next to the hotel, which was safely enclosed behind a wooden door each night. They even parked and extracted our car for us, which was great. Our room was smallish but nice and clean; we'd recommend it.

Trip Down Memory Lane: Fino Mornasco

The evening trip from Como to Fino Mornasco was fun and different. The train was very simple to figure out, as it just goes to Milan and back twice an hour. We had some thoughts of making a day trip to Milan the next day instead of taking the boat ride, but we definitely made the right decision going with the latter. We'll be back to explore Milan in a few weeks.


Inside the train


Fino Mornasco train station

Fino Mornasco is a small town and it was none too impressive. David said it was the same when he was there. It was hard to imagine an 18-year-old David going on such a big adventure to live here for a year! But he had a really good experience so it was neat for him to revisit it a couple decades later.


That's the house at the corner of the road.

We headed up a hill and through a park from the train station, guided only by David's long-term memory. I was very impressed he was able to remember it so well. The family he lived with owned a toy company called Didatto and their house was built right on top of the factory. It is still exactly the same today, although it seemed a lot more slick when it was new, David says.


Front of the house


Back of the house, and David's room! He used to walk out on the balcony beneath the ivy arch in the evenings.

David got along really well with the boys in the family and I got to meet one of them, Gabriele, on our honeymoon! He's now an Orthodox monk and chiropractor (David didn't see that coming) and lives in the Italian Alps near France. He was really cool.

More Como


Alfa Romeo police car


Piazza San Fidele, the only square that David remembered clearly from 22 years ago.


Evening light in Como after our boat ride


Facade of the Duomo (cathedral)


Romanesque church of Sant Abbondio (11th century).

We visited this church the first morning in Como, somewhat on a whim. David woke up before I did and walked down to the pier on the lake to watch the boats and the fishermen. When I got up I met him down there, and we both soaked up our first real experience of warm sunshine in a long time. We intended to head back to the hotel for breakfast after that, but the church (researched the night before) didn't sound too far away so we decided to go for it. It ended up being a really long walk to the outskirts of town and we missed breakfast, but it was pretty nifty and worth the trip.






We stopped at a bakery on the way back to the hotel and had a brief rest before catching our 12:00 boat ride. Missing a hotel breakfast is no big loss in Italy. Italians eat a multi-course dinner late at night (8-10pm) so they don't eat much of a breakfast, and the hotels reflect this. You usually get cold meats and cheeses, a hard roll or croissant, and some cereal and yogurt. Not bad and entirely adequate, but not exciting either. This basic "Continental" selection is similar in France, but the quality of the bread and croissants is usually much better! The croissants at our current hotel in Lucera are actually inedible, which seems hard to do.

More from Lake Como






On the first part of our boat ride we kept our eyes peeled for George Clooney's house. We had a general idea of where it was, but didn't really know what to look for. David finally asked the young deckhand about it - alas, we had passed it already. But we ended up boarding the same boat after our stop in Bellagio, and the same guy recognized David and said "I show you George!" He even promised to have the captain drive closer to the shore so we could get a better look.

George's house is pretty close to Como so we had a long wait, but after an hour or so the captain did indeed go closer to the shore and blew his horn to get our attention. We looked up into the cabin and about five people, including the captain, were pointing to the shore and nodding enthusiastically. The young guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, "white one!" Good times.

So here it is, George Clooney's villa on Lake Como:




I believe this appeared in one of the Ocean's movies, but can't remember which one. Unfortunately George isn't home right now (my regular academic research on People.com indicates he's in the USA promoting his new movie), or we might have driven back to ask him out for espresso.

Sat 3/29: Pesaro

From Como we drove down the Autostrada (freeway) almost four hours to our stopover in Pesaro. We paid a somewhat hefty toll for the privilege, amounting to almost 20 euros total, but it is always worth it to us to pay tolls for the better roads and less traffic. We went past some interesting cities, including Ravenna, Parma, and Bologna, but we will visit some of those (especially Ravenna) on our way back up north.


David and the Fiat at a gas station along the way

I chose Pesaro mainly because it was halfway to our main destination in Puglia. The town is not terribly exciting and rather ugly in places, but it draws lots of English and German families in the summer because it has a long stretch of sandy beach on the Adriatic Sea. It was pretty quiet this time of year, but there were already some Italian families vacationing there.

Our hotel was located in an especially ugly building and our room was small and smelled funny. And the elevator was so rickety that I took the stairs every time. But on the bright side it was cheap, clean, and one of very few open in Pesaro this time of year. More importantly, it was only a block from the beach and we could see the ocean from the balcony of our fourth-floor room! We also got to park right out front, our handiest spot yet. Parking was free and wireless internet was free. So not a bad overnighter overall.


The Hotel Gala and our fine parking spot.


View to the sea


View to the car

After getting unpacked we wandered into town to have a look around and find something to eat. Pesaro is actually quite an old city and once you leave the beachfront ugliness, it was rather nice. We actually had a really difficult time finding something to eat, though! Just about the whole city seemed closed down until summer. But just as it looked like we'd need to have gelato for lunch (worse things have happened), we discovered a nice piazza with a small cafe that was open. David had a salami sandwich and I had a small round bread with tomato sauce, and we shared a tiny cannoli (too rich!).


Pesaro Cathedral

Thus refueled, we wandered the old town some more and visited the cathedral, which was a fantastic bonus! It wasn't super exciting in itself, but beneath the floor is an almost fully intact Byzantine mosaic floor! There were glass panels scattered throughout the interior allowing a glimpse of them in their original position, illuminated by a Euro coin put in a slot in the back of the church. I've never seen anything like it.


Interior, with glass panel over mosaics in the foreground


Mosaics - note that they extend even further under the floor. I think the whole modern floor needs to be made of glass!


Detail of dedication inscription at the back-center of the cathedral.


Mosaic mermaid


At the end of the day David relaxed and soaked his weary feet in the cool ocean. It was pretty fun that I could see him from the room.


We wondered if we'd be able to find anywhere open for dinner, but happily our hotel receptionist informed us that the restaurant across the street (green building above) would open at 8:00! Hooray! It was one of the nicest looking places we'd seen, and it turned out to be absolutely delicious and wonderfully cheap. David had their house special pasta, which was long macaroni in tomato and cream sauce with paprika, and I had a very nice spaghetti bolognese.

One thing we really love about Italy is that you can reliably order simple, cheap things that sound so boring - like pizza margherita or spaghetti bolognese - and they are almost universally fantastic because the ingredients are of the highest quality and they cook everything just right. And it's a really nice change from all the meat and potatoes we had in Germany!

Sun 3/30: The Holy House of Loreto

The next morning we set off for where we are now, Lucera. This was another four-hour drive and it was even more relaxing than the first stretch since we were away from most major cities. After about an hour, a huge dome and tower caught our attention from the freeway:



I had just begun to realize this might be Loreto, which I had pondered stopping to see a couple weeks ago but since had forgotten about, when an exit sign verified it and David took it! It was such a fun, unexpected break in our journey.

Loreto's huge basilica on the hill centers on a really unique Catholic shrine. Inside the church is said to be the very house in Nazareth where Jesus was raised by the Virgin Mary. It was said to have been carried to Italy from Nazareth by angels in the 1200s. Right! But it's a good site for my website and certainly sounds interesting, so we were glad to have a closer look.




Happily, we found a very safe-feeling parking lot just below the basilica, and it is free on Sundays! David backed the car up to the fence so the trunk wouldn't open, we carried all our camera gear and passports with us, and we set off up the hill for a quick visit.



The outer walls of the church are absolutely huge and look like a castle.


Dome and facade of the church


The church overlooks a piazza that was full of happy people chatting on a warm Sunday afternoon. It was such a nice, friendly atmosphere.


Young Italian men in typical casual attire: too-tight shirt with too-tight pants.


Love this typically Italian group - Carabinieri (federal police), a monk and a nun, who chatted away for quite some time.


Nun in the shadows of the corridor around the piazza.


Inside the church at the east end, this huge Renaissance marble enclosure shelters the Holy House of Loreto. It is a small space but the flow of pilgrims is fairly well organized, with a designated entrance and exit and some space to kneel at an altar inside.


Not wishing to disturb the faithful (though even some of them were using their cell phone cameras!), I took just this one picture above their heads. The altar area in the front is from the 1500s or 1600s but the side walls are said be the very ones from 1st-century Nazareth. The stones indeed look very old, and there were traces of medieval murals on them. All very interesting.

This was possibly the most enjoyable Catholic shrine we've visited yet. There was actually a service going on when we visited and a sign said photos weren't allowed, yet there was a very friendly, welcoming, family-like atmosphere about it, and no one even gave us a second look when we snuck a couple discreet photos. This is quite different from the stern coldness and even glares we have experienced in some other Catholic shrines (notably Einsiedeln in Switzerland).

Here, while the priest said the Mass to a large congregation, other people were milling around the side aisles and area around the Holy House, talking quietly, attending to their kids in strollers, confessing their sins to monks, standing in a little line to get their keys blessed by a priest, taking photos, or filming the Holy House with a camcorder! What an interesting place. We're so glad we stopped.

On the way out David found me an English pamphlet about the church, and back on the freeway I was very interested to read that thorough archaeological testing indicates the Holy House is likely to be from Nazareth. The stone is not found locally and is cut in a way they only do in the Middle East, etc. Even more interesting is that there are written records of an Italian family called "di Angeli" bringing the stones of a house said to belong to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth back by boat in the 1200s, during the Crusades. So it was indeed brought to Loreto "by angels"!

Sun 3/30 - Wed 4/2: Lucera

Tonight is the last of three nights we have been based in Lucera, a nondescript town that is mostly pretty rundown and dusty. There are some charms to its cobblestoned old town, but one brief walk through it the evening we arrived was enough. There is a large and historic castle at the very top of the hill, but it is only open 9am-2pm and we haven't bothered to tour it.

Yesterday we did a long driving journey to three sights in northern Puglia, all of which were fantastic and will make excellent additions to my website. More on those soon! Tomorrow morning we leave for Ruvo di Puglia, where we will be based for five nights at the Hotel Pineta.