Day 31.the Last...What a Blast!

Goodbye, Ty and Paola, goodbye Italy, goodbye Europe..hello Home!  And...all bags/40 bottles accounted for! Peggy's awesome!

Day 30..dinner on the patio...scenery shots!

As we prepare to depart, we had the privilege of eating on the patio looking over the lake...wow!

Day 30...dinner amazingness...

Tonight's menu was vegetarian and delicious. Stuffed beignets, melted cheese and baked zucchini, eggplant strudel and watermelon sorbet...polenta with melted cheese amuse bouche...and yummies throughout.

Day 30..the Penultimate Day!

Steve and Elva greatly enjoyed the cooking class with Moreno Maglia, as have we and the Jordan's in the past. What a great way to spend a beautiful day..ferry to and from, beautiful village setting and great camaraderie in the kitchen. The food was awesome too of course!

Day 29...Dinner from the Lake

Peggy and Elva enjoyed helping Ty in the kitchen to prepare this great menu of oil soaked lake fish, herb pasta, grappa roasted rabbit and cherry and chocolate bread pudding. NeNe has been a great friend and waiter all week.

Day 29...fun weather afternoon!

Doing crosswords, acrostics and looking forward to dinner from our patio, we are treated to some great visuals...the first is a panorama ranging from sunshine over Mennagio to clouds over Bellagio to rain over Como. Then, just across the lake..a rainbow...

Day 29..more lake and lunch shots

The rains have created some beautiful water falls, and the clarity of the air is hard to capture on this device. You can probably tell by now...I'm loving the anchovies...and my friends are loving gelato...Enjoy!

Day 29...Boating around the Lake

We departed at 10 from the grand hotel mennagio and returned by 2. Along the way we passed a number of lovely villas, including you know who's, and we had a nice walk on the only island in the lake. The second photo is of our b and b, including the now world famous balcony (Jordans, Burls, Gubitzs...). The picture of Clooney is pretty obvious, he's waving out of his bedroom window at Peggy as she blushes from the unwanted attention. There is also the villa balbiallini...where casino royale was filmed, and who could ignore the Villa d' Este...the world's, supposedly, nicest hotel.  After that you see the villa owned by Richard Branson. The sad part about the lake story is how many of the villas are being bought up by middle east and Russian money.

Day 28...dinner with Ty

Tonight was tomato night! Tomatoes stuffed with veg and anchovies, rice with tomatoes, garlic and pesto, beef in tomato stew and tomato sorbet..really? Really!