The Stowells: 6/1/11

I haven't posted anything about our dream trip to Italy yet. Candice has been doing a beautiful job of going day by day of our trip on her blog (mikecandi.blogspot.com). I'm just going to start randomly with the last day and a half. I'm thinking about Bartek today because we just received the news that he and Frederike are expecting their first child! Bartek lived with us for his and Michael's junior year in high school and quickly worked his way into our hearts. We were so thrilled when he was able to fly over last minute from Germany to meet us in Lake Como!

We fell in LOVE with BELLAGIO! What a quaint, charming, gorgeous, scenic town set right on Lake Como. These are the views from our hotel rooms at the Hotel Belvedere.

The village was to die for. We loved the main little cobblestone street that went through the town. The pictures where we seem to be sitting right in the street are from our first night out for dinner at a wonderful restaurant. They had a big basket of pillows out on the stairs where you could sit and wait for your table to be ready. It was a great people watching spot. It was near the end of this dinner that Bartek walked in and made our trip complete. We all started cheering. I'm sure the other diners were wondering who this celebrity was.

I don't know where Robby is heading off to in this shot!!

"brothers from another mother"

Looks like Rain!

I had seen pictures of the gardens of the Melzi Villa. It was a short walk down to the edge of town. It was even prettier than the pictures! We only had about an hour to walk around but we enjoyed every minute of it.

Everyone got a little camera happy.

Go Candice!!

Lovin' on Auntie "Staciatella"

In the afternoon of the second day we headed off with this Italiano on his beautiful wooden boat he had made from special wood from Venice (and about which he was very particular!!) to get out on the lake and see all the beautiful villas along the way. Our destination was the villa used to film the ending scene of the 007 movie, Casino Royale. The NAME of the villa is VILLA DEL BALBIANELLO - long story--don't ask--just another Adrienne-ism for the books!! (Just don't stop a tour guide in the middle of her tour to ask what the name of the villa is unless you know how letters are pronounced in Italian and you have your glasses on so that you can type it into your iphone. If she decides to come type it in for you, make sure she doesn't have long acrylic nails that can't function on an iphone. Flustered, she then went on to say, "Okay, so, after THAT distraction, I was about to tell you . . . ") Anyway, the grounds were BEYOND stunning. I didn't want to leave. Luckily we squeezed the end of our visit in just as a storm kicked up. We had a rainy ride back to Bellagio and arrived just as the sun came back out.