First weekend back from a week’s holiday in Menaggio in Lake Como. Another step on a long recovery from a serious stroke, this break was actually booked before the incident and booked to share with friends we have known for 17 years, ever since first meeting in China.
As it turned out, we were furnished with a lovely hotel with very good food, excellent weather and a perfect resort for recovery and relaxation. We managed to see the local area, including boat trips to Bellagio and Varenna. Menaggio was a chilled, friendly and laid back resort, Varenna even more so and Bellagio a tourist hot spot in comparison. Although threatened with thunderstorms every day, we never so much as received a spot of rain all week and the temperature could not have been managed to a more ideal setting if we’d attempted personal intervention. We also managed to visit Villa Carlotta, a villa , museum and botanical gardens, with lovely lakeside views and a fine art collection; probably only visited once a year by the owner, Carlotta (in fairness, she died at 23), it’s substantially more popular now!
A lovely break, at just the sort of relaxed pace that makes it comfortable for a recovering patient, and such a perfect fit that even Denise, normally such a ‘see it, do it, got the t-shirt’ kind of visitor, was wont to chill out and expressed a desire to return. For me, a real success (not least the air travel) so it’s a shame that the AF managed to raise its head two or three times during the vacation. Any trouble minimised by the setting, weather and friendly locals and, not least, the relaxed style of our holiday companions.