Lake Como and Lugano

Today we drove a bit north, to two places. The first was to Lake Como. the lake is shaped like a big inverted Y. There are many villages all around the lake, and while driving around, we stayed near the shore. It seems that many of these villages are situation so that there is not a lot of space to walk along the lake. Where ever there is space along the shore of the lake, someone has built an extravagant house or villa. 

One person who has a villa here is George Clooney. I didn't think that it would be a big deal to see his place, but once we found it, I did feel a short burst of being star struck. There was no one else treating his home like a tourist destination, and I am sure that all the locals are aware of the celebrity status of his home (in fact, in order to maintain peace with the locals, a law was passed against looking at his home for more than five minutes), so I felt a bit embarrassing when I noticed locals walking along the narrow road beside his villa.

A short ride from Lake Como is Switzerland. Not too far into Switzerland is another lake town called Lugano. Because Switzerland is not in the European Union, I was looking forward to getting my passport stamped. Because the border is so commonly traversed, however, the immigration officials don't bother stamping everyone's passport, so I was sad for about a minute.

It turns out that south of the Alps, the mountains that offer a natural division of Switzerland, everyone speaks Italian, and so Lugano seemed like an Italian town, but much more modern, and without much of the historical architecture that a comparable Italian town might have. As a result, Lugano lacked a certain charm I might have expected. One redeeming feature, however, that was not present at Lake Como was development around the lake that allowed tourists to walk along the water. The shops that were in the main town center were dominated by expensive stores, especially those catering to watches. It can be fun to look at watches that cost more than cars.