October 3, 2025–Portofino, Italy 

Tonight we are in Portofino, Italy.  We drove here this morning from Lake Como, where we stayed in a lovely town called Bellagio, which is located on the lake where the two southern arms branch.  The drive around the lake is an 89 mile road called the Gardesana Scenic Route, opened in 1931.  After driving the section from Como to Bellagio on Wednesday, I wouldn’t want to tackle the rest of it.  The roads are notoriously narrow, winding, and busy, so just the 20 mile drive to Bellagio took us over an hour.  I read that if you want to drive the entire road, you should do it in two days.  No thanks.  Italian drivers are insane.  (Apologies to my readers who are of Italian ancestry. Your food is great!)

On our way from Lucerne to Bellagio, we drove over the Gotthard Pass, which goes over the Saint-Gotthard Massif, a mountain range in the Swiss Alps.   The Gotthard Pass connected Northern and Southern Europe and for centuries was a major trade route.  A ten mile cobblestone road, called ‘The Tremola,” was built from the village of Airolo up to the pass between 1827 and 1832 to serve as a commercial route for horse-drawn wagons, and to generally facilitate trade.  Of course there is a modern road now, but the Tremola road is still open to hikers and cyclists.  It has an elevation gain of around 3,900 feet so it has to be tough going on those cobblestones. We didn’t hike it, so no pictures of the road. But we did get some from the main road.

I thought it really strange that there were five of those ugly power windmills up on the pass.  At first I thought I was seeing things, but there they were, along with numerous ugly substations with electric wires running down the side of the mountain.  So, just think about it.  A beautiful mountain pass in the Alps with a historic cobblestone road to the top, and the pristine beauty is marred by the addition of windmills and electric lines.  It boggles the mind.  

In Lake Como we stayed at the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, a hotel originally built in 1851 as a villa for the Count and Countess Frizzoni, a noble Italian family.  It’s a beautiful property in an absolutely stunning setting with long range views of Lake Como.  The hotel is right in the center of the old town of Bellagio.  The picture of Doug and me was taken by one of the hotel employees who insisted we sit in the ornate blue chairs. He pushed them together, but not close enough to look like we actually like each other. We look like we think we are some kind of royalty. Haha.

Bellagio has two parts—an upper part of town, along Via Garibaldi, and a lower part along the lake shore. The two are connected by a series of “streets” which are not streets at all but staircases.  Salita Serbelloni is the most famous of these staircases.  This wide series of steps, lined with shops, galleries and restaurants, leads from Via Garibaldi in the upper portion of Bellagio down to the waterfront.  

All of the towns around the lake are connected by a system of passenger ferries, along with at least one ferry that carries cars. That means you can jump on a ferry and go to the other towns without having to navigate the narrow, winding road in a car.

We are headed next to Lucca, a town we have actually been to before. After that we head to Siena and then Florence.