Living a Dream

I went into Whole Foods today because I occasionally like to pay an extra $5 for every item that Wal-Mart sells and I got a taste of nostalgia. I was in the diary aisle and saw yogurt drinks for the totally idiotic price of $4.59 and it took me back. As I've discussed with anyone who will read or listen, living in Italy was really cool. There were rough parts - transit strikes , language barriers, and the smell of dog pee almost everywhere - but there were obviously wonderful parts. Big, wonderful things like train travel, proximity to cool places, history, art, generous people, great food, and others were just part of our lives. I'm not going to talk about those big things. I want to talk about the little things that I miss about being in Europe. I'm starting with yogurt drinks. This may seem silly, but you know those little Dannon drinkable yogurts? They're 6-8 ounces and come in 4-packs? They're tasty, but they're not exactly filling. You can also get C...

No. I did not see George Clooney, nor do I know where his house is. That's the first (and usually only) question that gets asked by Americans about Lake Como. The reason he "lives" there though is that it's insanely beautiful and simultaneously close to and far from the rest of the world. It's a 40 minute train from Milan for about 3 euros per person, and once you get there you'll see towns that seem to be only reachable by boat while others are just one more stop along the train route. So what I'm saying is that it's really nice. On an unseasonably warm January day, the two of us headed out to see what all the fuss was over, although I'd gone with Graham in 2012 and knew it was gorgeous. We arrived about 10:00 a.m. and began by stomping through the town of Como, which is pretty nice. It has a major medieval feel, with an old city-wall popping up in a few places and a couple of giant cathedrals. The main one, the Duomo (aka the Como Duomo, to p...