Atlantica - 01.10.2006, Page 44

You aren’t going to see George Clooney waterskiing shirtless or
get invited to dinner at his villa for a plate of tagliatelle
prepared by his personal chef. So extract the fantasy
from your head, and let’s move on. You’ve got:

42 AT L A N T I CA
You’ve been waiting for your luggage for
40 minutes at the airport in Milan when
the black conveyor belt jerks to a start.
A couple of shortish men in sports gear start
jockeying for your front row spot at the conveyor
belt. You:
A) Give them a dirty look – it was a long flight
and you’re hungry – and stand your ground.
B) Move to the other side of the belt where
there are less people.
C) Who cares? In less than an hour, you will be
submerged in a glass of Italian wine on a sunny
piazza, the sparkling waters of Lake Como at
your side.
C) Let the small men take their big bags.
This is your first real trip to Italy, and you
rightly decided that Lake Como would be the
perfect spot for a long weekend. It’s roughly 45
kilometers from the Milan airport, and as one of
the smaller lakes in North Italy’s lake district, it’s
a geographic area you can wrap your weekender
arms around. From your online research, Como
seemed to offer the right balance of things to do
and nothing to do. You would be able to hike, or
sit and imbibe on a balcony.
From Milan, it’s an easy 50-minute drive to the
city of Como on the southern tip of the lake’s
right leg. (Lake Como is famously shaped like
an upsidedown ‘Y’.) You have a rental from the
airport, and decide to take a secondary road. Even
though you’ve heard Italy is slammed with tour-
ists in mid-August, traffic is light.
Como, the largest town in the area, is base
camp for most visitors to the lake, and, you’ve
read, not worth much of a stop. With about
90,000 residents and a silk textile industry histori-
cally supported by big fashion houses in Milan,
the city is turning more and more to tourism.
“It seems like the destiny of Italy is to live
on tourism – not industry,” Valeria Molteni, an
employee at the Como tourist information office,
tells you. She says industry all over Italy is suffer-
ing right now, and as for silk farming in the area,
“Now we get the thread from China.”
What Como lacks in silk production it makes
up for in young lovers hiding behind corners, a
storybook lakeside promenade, and some mean
gelato. With a scoop of chocolate and tiramisu
smashed together on a cone, you wander to the
water’s edge. Wooded Alpine hills jut up on either
side of the narrow lake, and docked boats rock
lazily back and forth in the afternoon light. If this
is the town to skip, you think to yourself, I’m set.
Your plan for the remainder of the day is to head
48 HOURS ON LAKE COMO
and you’ve got some decisions to make.
By Krista Mahr
Photos by Páll Stefánsson
042 Ítalía Atl506.indd 42 25.8.2006 10:01:19