Bellagio- Day two

 I could hardly believe my eyes, when I woke up to this view at about 7:15am! Are you kidding me? It was beautiful, quiet and you could hear a pin drop.  So anxious to get our day started, We woke up and hurried downstairs for breakfast.

Here at the bottom of the stairs we land in Pescallo. You can rent a boat, a kyak, go water skiing, etc. It's filled with people who just die for the view. You can find Lake Fish, Swans and families of ducks here. Everyone gets along just great! :O)
















So today our plan was to take a boat taxi with 14 others which is semi private, and go see the Villa del Balbianello! We met Jenine & Luca who own the boat company Bellagio water taxi's. jenine does the schedule and Luca does the tours. He is so knowledgeable about all the villas, and has such a charming personality...not to mention an incredibly beautiful boat.

Mario with Luca

Bellagio Water Taxis

The Villa del Balbianello is a villa in the comune of Lenno (province of Como), Italy, overlooking Lake Como. It is located on the tip of a small wooded peninsula on the western shore of the south-west branch of Lake Como, not far from the Isola Comacina and is famous for its elaborate terraced gardens.

The villa was built in 1787 on the site of a Franciscan monastery for the Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini. The two towers which can be seen in the picture are the campanili of the convent church. After the cardinal’s death in 1796 Giuseppe Arconati Visconti bought the villa and made improvements to its gardens and the loggia.

In the nineteenth century the villa belonged to the Porro-Lambertenghi family. The writer and patriot Silvio Pellico was a visitor in 1819.

By the early twentieth century the buildings had fallen into a state of neglect when an American military officer, Butler Ames, purchased and renovated the villa and its garden. In 1974 it was bought by the explorer Guido Monzino (leader of the first Italian expedition to climb Mount Everest), who filled it with rich collections, including artifacts acquired on his expeditions. Monzino, who died in 1988, left the villa to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano, the National Trust of Italy. Its grounds now form part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.

waiting for Luca to come pick us up

What an incredible villa, and very interesting man that Guido was! Very eccentric!
Count Guido Monzino (2 March 1928 – 11 October 1988) was a twentieth-century Italian mountain climber and explorer. In 1973 he led the first Italian expedition to climb Mount Everest.

Monzino was born on 2 March 1928 in Milan. In his early twenties he climbed the Matterhorn. Subsequently he made a total of 21 expeditions to places including Patagonia, Equatorial Africa, Greenland, the North Pole and the Himalaya, and sometimes following in the footsteps of the famous explorer and mountaineer Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi (1873–1933).

Guido Monzino died on 11 October 1988. He was interred at the Villa del Balbianello on the banks of Lake Como, his last home. The villa today contains a museum devoted to Monzino which includes artefacts acquired on his expeditions including Inuit sculpture, as well as memorabilia including one of thedog sleds from his 1971 expedition to the North Pole, and Monzino’s extensive collections of maps and books.

Once we got back to Bellagio, we did the usual Gelato....and walked and walked and walked! Then we went to dinner at Bilacus right in Bellagio.  The food was GREAT, the service was GREAT and we had a great meal, of course! 

In this picture, we walked over to the GRAND Villa Serbelloni Hotel. This hotel was enormous, elegant and TOP NOTCH.... We decided it would be a great photo.... One of our best -YET!