1st Weekend in Italia (05/05 - 05/06/12)

For our first weekend in Italy we did not plan anything too ambitious.  We hoped  to be able to meet with a real estate agent on Saturday to check out some of the apartments we saw online, but HR had not yet set us up with our agent.  We decided to head into Lecco anyway because we were meeting a work friend of Derrick's there for dinner, and we figured maybe we could stop by the real estate office of the company listing the apartments we liked.

It sprinkled in the morning, but once it cleared up we began the 30 minute trip to Lecco, with me driving the beast....

Okay, its not really a beast. I just call it that because it has a manual transmission, yikes!

Once we got into Lecco we had lunch at a nice pizzeria, but I discovered my camera battery had died.  So sorry the pictures from Saturday are quite limited, but don't worry, once we move to Lecco I'll take lots of pictures of the city for you!

After lunch we did find the real estate office for the apartments we liked, but the guy working there DEFINITELY did not speak english.  Since that was a bust, we wandered over to the area of town with all the shops so that I could look for my very own Italian sciarpa (scarf)!  As we were walking around there were street musicians playing that I REALLY wanted to take pictures of.  They definitely take it up a notch from Houston.  Instead of the one guy playing the saxophone, they had four guys (3 on violins and 1 on the accordion).  They were also really good, so we had to walked by them a couple of times trying to be inconspicuous.

After stalking the street musicians we found an accessories store with lots and lots of scarves, so I purchased my first item of clothing in Italy!

Is that red and pick leopard print you ask?  Why yes it is!

After shopping we checked out the city a little more before meeting up with Derrick's friend Matteo and his girl friend Veronica.  Matteo actually works at a different Cameron plant south of us in Voghera, but Veronica is an engineer at the Colico plant with Derrick.  Matteo has assigned Veronica to be my conversation buddy so that she can teach me Italian and practice her English =)

We had a couple drinks with Matteo and Veronica, and even ended up at the cafe where they had their first date!  But then it was time for dinner.  Matteo is from a town just on the outskirts of Lecco, and on the weekends Italians seem to go home to their parents' houses.  Matteo had planned a dinner for us with some of his home town friends, as they all had returned home for the weekend as well.

We drove over to a parking lot near the restaurant, because we were suppose to meet Matteo's friends there, so that we could carpool up the hill to the restaurant (why is everything always at the top of a hill?).  Well, we were waiting and about 6 other cars showed up.  It turns out that we were eating with another 14 people!  With us 4 we had 9 couples at dinner.  When we got to the restaurant it was very small.  There was already another party of about 18 seated, and we our group we maxed out the restaurant!

The dinner was really very fun.  We had all the traditional Italian courses: antipasti (cured meats, cheeses, pickled onions), primi (pasta course - risotto and polenta), secondi (steak! yum!), dessert (panna cotta! double yum!), and caffe (coffee to wake you up because it is now after midnight).  We got to the restaurant around 8:30 PM, and didn't leave until 12:30 AM.  It really was an epic meal =) .  Luckily a good number of Matteo's friends spoke english, and the other party of 18 people was celebrating a birthday so they kept singing, popping champagne, and generally keeping things interesting.  After saying good bye to everyone multiple times (Derrick says it sounds like they're speaking Chinese because they ciao so many times in rapid succession. Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!) and making it back to Colico, we collapsed in our bed around 1:30 AM.

When we managed to crawl out of bed on Sunday it was unfortunately raining.  We had hoped to check out this castle nearby, but they close during bad weather so that was out.  Derrick had a hankering for a sandwich so we drove into Colico to search for a paninoteca (sandwich shop!).  We found a restaurant called Il Pirata (The Pirate) that served sandwiches, but it was disappointingly closed.  So we headed next door to a different restaurant, and Derrick calmed his craving for american food with this little plate of home....

We have noticed that french fries are very popular here, and are even an acceptable side dish at the fancy restaurants.  Salmon filet with a side of fries? Go for it.  We've even seen a dish they call American pizza, which appears to be a cheese pizza with fries on top of it.  I suspect we'll eventually have to try this creation.

After lunch we walked a little along the boardwalk, and the clouds were doing this weird thing where they get stuck in the mountains around they lake, so you know I had to get some pictures of that.

Derrick posing for me on the boardwalk.  I think this is a memorial to sailors lost at sea (or at lake?)

Since it was still kind of icky out, we decided to drive partially around the lake and check out some of the towns we hadn't seen before.  Colico is at the north east end of one of the fingers of the lake (the lae is shaped like an upside down "Y", and Colio is at the top right corner of the stick part), so we went around the top of the lake and started heading south.  There were a number of cute "beachy" looking towns, that I would like to check out more sometime.  You can take the ferry from Lecco or Colico to the other side of the lake, so I may have to do this so I can spend the day at some of these beach towns.

On our way back to Colico our exit was blocked to we ended up south of Colico in the towns of Dervio and Dorio.  We decided to take the scenic way back along the lake, and came across this old structure.

Tower of the Corenno Plinio Castle

Really fat cat in the grass by the castle

 

From what I can find this place was built in the 10th or 14th century (my guides disagree) as a military fortress. The problem is there are A LOT of old structures in Italy, so when you just happen upon something (instead of finding it in a tour book) its hard to tell if its of any significance.  This fortress doesn't appear to be especially important, but it did give us some fun photos, and they had a viewing area setup to point you to the other areas of historical interest around the lake.  Derrick had fun documenting them.

Waterfall!

At a later date a church was also added onto the Corenno Plinio castle, so of course I got a few shots of that as well.

To finish out our weekend we went down to a beach we found not far from Olgiasca where Derrick had fun skipping rocks and hunting for fish.

Hunting for fishies!