Friday, May 6, 2011- Our pre-ordered breakfast arrived promptly at 8 am for our last morning at the Chateau. We arranged with the Chateau to have a Lyon taxi pick us up at 11:30 am for our1:55 pm flight to Milan. It was a luxury Mercedes sedan taxi with a formal driver for the 1 hour drive to the Lyon airport. EasyJet has a strict limit of 40 kg/88 lbs TOTAL of checked luggage for two people and only ONE carry-on per person. So we created a carry-on bag for me that would not only hold my briefcase with iPad, but also sundry electronics and laundry items. We planned to just continue to move items out of our checked bags into the carry-on to reach our weight limit. That wasn't necessary, as we came in under our weight allotment. EasyJet was a lot like Southwest Airlines, except you can buy not only drinks, but hot sandwiches, muffins and tons of duty-free items on board. We ordered some wine and a ham and cheese sandwich that took longer to prepare than our flight... almost! We got the sandwiches as we were landing, scarfing them down just moments before touch-down. But the flight wasn't full, and generally we don't think the airline EasyJet deserves the nick-name our British friends at the Chateau used: "Sleazy-Jet!"
Another driver that our travel consultant booked was in Malpensa Airport waiting for our arrival in Milan. A very pleasant chap, he motored us to Lake Como in about 45 minutes. The arrival was high-class all the way, and we were pleased to be upgraded to a Junior Suite from our booked "Lake View Room." It's great suite, with a nice size living room with a couch and two chairs, plus a desk. And a fabulous bathroom, walk-in closet and the suite has three big window with balconies that open to the Lake, one of which has a cute table and two outdoor chairs.
This part of Lake Como was inhabited by the Romans 2000 years ago, and it remains a very special place. What I like best is that we have this super-exclusive, all-inclusive resort, but you can walk outside the gates and in 10 minutes are in downtown Cernobbio, a 
cute little lake-side town with tons of interesting shops and restaurants. One of the problems of the beautiful Chateau de Bagnols was the quiet isolation: Great for contemplation and reflection, but it didn't leave much for activities outside the hotel, unless you took a taxi. This "captive audience" syndrome leads to a bit of an advantage for the hotel operator, when it comes to prices and value. But at Villa d'Este, you have a choice of using the beautiful facilities of the hotel, or not--as you choose. I like that option!
On our first night here, we were determined to walk a bit. We sauntered though the grounds of this spectacular lake-side property... acres and acres of perfectly-manicured gardens, buildings and water-front activities. They have two great restaurants, comparably priced--one formal (coat & tie), one casual. But we were a bit tired of stuffy food and so ventured out into Cernobbio for some local cuisine.
And did we hit a home run! After a glass of wine at the beautiful lake-front Harry's Bar in the middle of Cernobbio, we moved back to a place I spotted while walking along a side street: Ristorante L'Hostaria. When I went into the restaurant earlier at about 7 pm, I asked to see a menu. The proprietor pulled one out and proceeded outside to post it in the window box outside his establishment. There were only 7 tables inside... a good sign for me, and the menu was entirely in Italian--no annoying English translations, or worse--photos of the dishes on the posted menus like we saw at another lake-front touristy restaurant.
So after Harry's Bar, we wandered back to L'Hostaria for our dinner. I never expected that the man who showed us his menu, was the maitre'd, the waiter, the cook, the sommelier--everything! It was a one-man restaurant! He takes the orders, moves into his spotless kitchen, starts the orders, moves back to the dining room, and so forth. We had a great view from our little table of the door to the kitchen, so we could see the owner/chef/waiter do his thing!
It was absolutely amazing! He pulled off every dish perfectly... starting with a wonderful salad of greens with warm shrimp and mint. Then a pasta dish--tortellini with spinach and ricotta. Then I had branzini fish filets, while Ronna chose a sauteed baby chicken. All of it pulled off as if he had a staff of cooks in the kitchen. But it was just him! We ended with Tiramasu and decaf espresso, and everything was excellent.
Imagine this kind of place in San Francisco... no worries about employee taxes, health care assessments, workers comp, anything! Perhaps I have a new career ahead! We continued to compliment the owner, and finally learned his name, Eugene. We asked him what it was like to do everything, every night in his restaurant. He said in his broken English, "You have to be fucking crazy!"
Anyway, super memorable for our first night in Lake Como!
Saturday, May 7, 2011 - Official 30th Anniversary Day - We awoke with the amazing warm light of Northern Italy sparkling on Lake Como. We are truly blessed to be in such a beautiful suite with views that change with the hours. We called for room service to get our included Continental Breakfast, expecting it would take a half hour or more. This is a very large hotel, with buildings spread over many, many acres. To our surprise, our breakfast trays were here in less than 10 minutes! More amazing service!
As we mentioned, we got a free lunch at the swanky gourmet restaurant as part of our Virtuoso booking from our travel consultant, Kittina Powers. I thought it would be a minimalist thing of limited choices. Wrong! We were seated outside on the gorgeous patio with a lake-side table and were told we could have a three-course lunch made up of anything on the menu! We were polite and didn't go crazy, but it was quite spectacular food... starting with a gnocchi pasta dish for me with braised radicchio, while Ronna had a marvelous chicken soup with dumplings that was superb. Then came our entrees--I had a tasty baby crispy chicken with tempura vegetables and garnished with the smallest dice of carrots, tomatoes and zucchini that I have ever seen! Delicioso! Ronna had a perfect veal Milanese. We were stuffed but HAD to do a third dessert course. A simple request for some gelato turned into gorgeous plates of ice cream with beautiful adornments and a plate full of cookies and chocolate sweets! What a lunch! All for "free" and I priced out our simple orders at north of $250. Amazing!
After our memorable lunch, we decided to walk to Cernobbio and take the Lake Como Ferry to Como... to see the largest town in the area, do some sightseeing and possibly some shopping. The ferries run about every 15 minutes and traverse the whole length of huge Lake Como. This is not a small body of water! It takes almost two hours to travel by boat from the top to bottom. But our little run from Cernobbio to Como took only 12 minutes.
The busy city of Como was bustling with tourists, shoppers and students. A nice setting overlooking the water, with tons of typical Italian trattorias and bars on each corner. We walked a lot and ended up at the base of the famous Como-Brunate Funicular Railway, that takes you from the lake level up to the top of a nice mountain to Brunate, a village of about 1,000 inhabitants at an elevation of 2,100 feet. You move quickly up the steep track of the train at about a 45 degree angle. It's a very thrilling ride and historic. This Funicular Railway opened in 1896.
We enjoyed the views from the top overlooking all of Lake Como and then made our way down. We didn't notice that our return ferry to Cernobbio left from a different pier than our arrival ferry. So we almost missed our 4:45 departure! The nice Italian longshoremen, held the boat as we ran to Pier 4 and we made it on! We also noticed several boats named "Villa d'Este 1 or 2." We wondered whether these were private boats to take us back to the Villa. Nope. They are simply tourist boats that take curious onlookers outside the lake-front areas of Villa d'Este for a glimpse of the rich and famous! How lucky we are!
Back at Villa d'Este, we enjoyed our suite and prepped for our official 30th Anniversary Celebration Dinner. Hotel management had a nice bottle of champagne chilled in our room for us when we returned from our Como tour and we took the picture that I just posted to Facebook just before leaving for our taxi ride to Ristorante Navedano in Como.
A word about taxis in Italy and France. They don't just charge for your ride. They start the meter from wherever they are located when they get your request for a ride. So when our cab arrived at the Villa, it already had almost 20 Euros charged on the meter. That's $30 for just having him come to this place. By the time we finished our 20 minute ride to our dinner restaurant, the tab was about 40 Euros ($60)... but again, who's counting!
Our dinner at Ristorante Navedano was very good. When we were seated in this gorgeous dining room filled with tulips and orchids, there were only about four other tables occupied. We had some simple salads to start, then shared a nice black squid carbonara pasta dish and then Ronna had "Wild Boar Chops" and I had veal liver! Both excellent. By the time our entrees arrived the restaurant was packed. And that's when the service fell off a bit... we passed on dessert and decided to move back to Villa d'Este.
Determined to see if I could make my cab dollars go a bit further, I asked the restaurant owner to call us the "closest cab" she could find. She did and within 10 minutes we were boarding a nice clean mini-van... with only 12 Euros on the meter already. This is a bit better, I figured. We had a nice ride to Villa d'Este and I smirked when I saw the meter reading "only" 23 Euros as we pulled into the Villa's driveway. But suddenly the meter jumped to 41 Euros! "What happened?" I asked the driver. "Oh, there is an automatic surcharge for trips after 10 pm." Yikes! Can't win for losing! But it's only money!
Despite my frugality, it was a very special and fun night! A marvelous way to celebrate 30 years!
Sunday, May 8, 2011 - We awoke to see an even clearer day on Lake Como. There's a bit of a breeze and it has moved some of the haze off the lake.We pulled on our clothes and went to the main formal dining room for our breakfast. It was one of the most lavish breakfast buffets we've ever seen! Everything from omelets to cheeses to amazing breads and rolls... all included in our room tariff.
We then freshened up a bit in our suite, and began a nice walk up the aqueduct steps in the main garden area of the Villa. You climb hundreds of feet with a bubbly path of water naturally flowing down from a stream into two parallel raised aqueducts next to the pathways. You get amazing views of the lake from the top structure that houses a huge statue of Hercules. There is a wonderful Chef's garden with dozens of kinds of herbs and vegetables along the way to visit, too.
Time to post this blog before it gets stale!
--Bill, with edits by Ronna
Our Pictures of Lake Como
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