Greetings From Venice:
This will be the story of our visit last weekend to Villa del Balbianello on Lake Como. These little stories are just like local television news. If you have pictures (video tape) you do the story. No pictures, then the story doesn’t make the news show. Sophia took over 60 photos of the Villa, so I feel compelled to share the story.
It’s late Tuesday afternoon and we’re in our hotel/apartment in Venice. Keaka and I just walked around for a couple of hours (saw about 10% of the city), while Marlene and Sophia went shopping (for Sophia, who seems to want to dress like a teenage girl, which isn’t exactly what mom always has in mind). Venice seems to be somewhere between the Bronix, NY and a beautiful romantic city of waterways. We can see the gondoles going by from our apartment, and one of the drivers is singing as he passes by at this very moment, getting Marlene to exclaim, “I love that, I really love that.” More on the city of close quarters and water vehicles later.
Back to Lake Como, where there are a handful of old villas that are open for tours (no, George Clooney’s is not open for tours). It’s key to remember that the lake is surrounded by old (ancient might be a better word) structures. Many are or were opulent. We decided to visit Villa del Balbianello, which sits on a little peninsula leaning out into the lake. For many years the property was occupied by franciscan friars and later a Cardinal (no, not of St. Louis baseball fame). The friars dated back to the 1500s and before. The current structures were built in the late 1700s. There’s much more, and, yes, you can look it up if you’re interested. The last owner was Guido Mongino, who resided at the property from 1974 until his death in 1988. Manzino was rich (obviously) and the first Italian to climb Mt. Everest. He was quite an individual and I imagine there’s been much written about old Guido. The property can be reached by foot, but we were attracted by the option to take a small boat, which we did.
Photo #1 – This photo is of one of the water entrances to the property.
Photo #2 – An Englishman saw our fate and offered to take the first photo of the four of us together.
Photo #3 – The main house on the property, which originally was a church, is five stories tall.
Photo #4 – The gardens are magnificent (two full-time gardeners paid by the money old Guido left in his will to maintain the villa, which he gave to the nation of Italy).
Photo #5 – The property sits on a gradual hill, which provides endless views of the lake, as captured here by Sophia Wilson (she asked the other day if I would give her credit at the bottom of each photo she took).
Photo #6 – A pretty nice shot of the grounds.
Photos #7 – This is not the villa, but the nearby loggia, which consists of two very nice rooms, one at each end of the structure, with an open area in between.
Photo #8 – A look at the steeples of the main five-story house.
It’s time for Sophia to lead me through transferring our next photos from the phone to the computer. I believe you’ll soon take a journey to Varenna (across the lake from our condo in Menaggio). I drop the names so you can get googling (ha! ha!). Then the photo tour will take you to the center of Milan (yesterday). We haven’t started taking Venice photos yet, as the phone needs charging (and a rest), after being Keaka’s game center for hours on end. Sophia’s favorite stop on the trip was the apartment in Geneva, because it had the best wifi (or we-fee as they like to say here in Europe). I’m not sure Keaka has a favorite spot on the trip, though it may be TF2 (Team Fortress 2, the game he plays, which doesn’t have violence, just shooting, stabbing and guys falling off rooftops).
Everyday brings adventure and things that are different from that we know in the United States. As ex-Blues coach Mike Keenan frequently stated, “embrace change”. Marlene is in a difficult with drawl, not being able to watch MSNBC whenever she pleases. We’ve introduced her to live streaming on the computer, which causes her nightly agony. She can’t believe the audio drops out and the picture stops frequently. Night after night she asks us if we can believe that people in Europe who want to watch MSNBC have to put up with these big glitches? I typically ask her how many people in Europe are eager to watch MSNBC, and how does that number compare with the number of folks in the United States eager to watch European TV? Last night I suggested she could read the news from the U.S. on the computer, but that didn’t help much. She just said it’s more entertaining to watch television. Usually, she gives up when the computer runs out of charge. Thank god we only have a few electrical adapters and those don’t always work, or the computer would never stop and she’d still be trying to find a perfect feed of The Rachael Maddow Show.
I don’t know about you, but there are many things here that have me perplexed. Most of the time the question gets down to, are we doing it the best way in the United States or are they doing it a better way in Europe? They don’t have tanks with their toilets here in Switzerland and Italy and in some places in France. Typically, here in Europe you have the toilet and then a gizmo on the wall to press to flush the toilet. I’ve always found that there are frequent American toilet issues that are resolved with a good old fashioned visit inside the tank. Well, there is no tank here. I guess all of that plumbing is behind the wall. I haven’t researched this, but I know the Europeans aren’t ripping into the wall every time the toilet is running or there are other malfunctions that revolve around the good old American toilet tank. So, what gives?
And, daylight savings time disappeared here last weekend. And, we understand the change in the U.S. is this weekend. Can anybody explain that? I have enough trouble keeping track of time differences, let alone having one week that is different from all of the other weeks.
By the way, just to embellish the age of some of these structures, I went into a hotel in Varenna the other day. It wasn’t spectacular, but very classy with lots of marble and had a great garden view of Lake Como. I asked the gal if she knew how old the building was? She said some of the building dated back to the 1500s, but that they generally do some renovation every century. She noted the last renovation was done in the late 1800s. I can’t imagine getting to the point in the United States where somebody will be talking about renovating one of those new Holiday Inn Express hotels every century or so.
On to Varenna and Milan (soon), and we’ll get to Venice.
The Wilsons
