Lake Como, Italy

The kids get a two week spring holiday here in Belgium, and we took full advantage of it.  We decided to be brave and take a driving trip through Italy and Germany.  Gran was also brave enough to come along.  It started with a 9 hour (more like 12 after traffic!) drive down to Varenna, Lake Como, Italy.  It was a long drive but nice since we got to see Switzerland on the way.  

So, this is the first installment of a very long trip :)

Trying to entertain herself during the long trek!

When we arrived at our hotel, this was the view from our window.  It was amazing and well worth the drive!

 

We found a nice restaurant that we all enjoyed and the employees were actually nice and welcoming...so we went there twice!

Varenna was the town that we stayed in off the lake.  It was very quaint, sweet and not busy at all.  It was still low season for this area, so we almost had the place to ourselves!

We hopped on a ferry the next day to go see some of the other towns around the lake.

Gran looking beautiful on our way to Bellagio!

Bellagio was the town we decided to see for the day.  No George Clooney sighting unfortunately, but the town is adorable!

This is where most of the shopping is located....yes, Mike carried the stroller up the stairs so that I could browse.

No explanation needed....

We found a park and the kids begged to play for a bit.  It was a gorgeous day!

The kids liked the shrub benches

Ms Sassy Queen waiting for her lunch 

Pizza was on the menu for most of the trip!

We found some stairs that led closer to the water, so the kids had fun with that.  I actually had to put some sunscreen on them!

Big brother showing little brother where our hotel was

Varenna

The red building in the middle was our hotel.  It was more like a dorm room situation but the view made up for that.  In high season it is a very busy hotel and guests have to use the funiculars (outside elevators) to reach their rooms.  You can see the railway going farther up from the red building to the building higher in the cliff, those are more rooms for our hotel.  It was closed because it wasn't high season, the kids were bummed because they wanted to ride up.

More water fun was found when we arrived back in Varenna.

The bottom stones were slippery and I figured we were gonna leave with someone being soaked, but we were lucky.

Mike trying to get Emerson to touch the water but she wasn't having it.

This was a gorgeous spot and I wished we could have stayed a little longer.  It makes for a great relaxing vacation, which we don't have that often.  

Next we started our drive to Venice....