Como

Having spent most of yesterday feeling grumpy, lonely and even a little homesick, I had a really good sleep last night, woke up this morning to find sun streaming in the window and four friends who were prepared to go on a day trip to Como.


We got there just in time to eat lunch outside in the glorious sunshine

and then took the funicular up a (proper) hill to Brunate, where there were spectacular views of the lake far, far, far below.

This was the mechanism that hauled us up the hill.

Then we took a boat trip around the lake and attempted to spot George Clooney before getting fabulous ice cream and heading back to the train station.

The final experience of our day out in pensioners' paradise was the discovery of a species that I had never seen before in this part of Italy: the Ned. Dressed in squint baseball caps and wearing skull and crossbones wristbands, they spent the journey back to the outskirts of Milan throwing McDonald's wrappers out of the train window. I wonder if some joker put them there to stop me feeling homesick...