Lake Como

   December 29th, 2012
We are here in Lake Como, Northern Italy, a place surrounded by mountains and hills (very
cold this time of year). We layer up to stay warm and head down to a dock on the lake
and buy our tickets for a boat to the main-city, Como. On the first boat ride, the view was
phonomenal! We had a great view of the mountains close by around us and the snowy peaks
far away as well.

 Lots of pictures were taken until we reached our destination at Como.
We bought another boat ticket for a trip around another part of the lake to Ballagio
and waited for the boat to arrive (which took about an hour) by walking around in the city
to see what we could see. We took a picture of a great big church in the city and walked
around the market nearby until it was time to board the boat. In Ballagio, we bought the
tickets to get back to Como and to our starting-point, and then we set off on our adventure
around the city (the boat didn't come back until five hours later.
It was a quiet city with not very many people, very different from Napoli.
As is normal for us, we curiously found a staircase and ventured up and down and all around
 until we found a bench by a boat-launch and rested and had a snack. The ducks in the lake
swam closer curiously (obviously looking to see if we had any food to share with them)
so we tossed some crumbs and soon they were literally sitting on our shoes and trying to
eat out of our hands! After our rest, we set off back on our adventure and got slightly
lost in someone's neighborhood, but we soon found our way back to the boat dock and waited
the next hour until the boat came back and we sailed back to Como, and then back to Cernobbio,
where our hotel is. On our way back to the hotel (it was already dark at 8 pm by then) we picked
up some pizza to-go at a ristorante called Tom & Jerry and speed walked up the hill up to the hotel
so that the pizza wouldn't have enough time to get cold. The we all rested on the bed and ate the
pizza until it was all gone :)

  12-2-2012 Staying in Modena, Italy, north of Naples. This is a very cold and quiet city, much different from Naples. Everyone here
hates Naples and the people there, and everyone in Naples hates the north. Driving from one city to the other is like traveling to different
universes! The reason we are staying here is for the museums such as the car companies, Ferrari and Lamborghini, and the motorcycle
company Ducati. Unfortunatly, both the Lambo and Ducati museums were closed until January, so we decided just to visit the two
Ferrari museums nearby. We were greatly disappointed by the Lamborghini museum, as we had planned to visit it that day (we already
knew that the Ducati museum was closed), one of the employees laughed at us as he told us "E chiuso" (it's closed) and  walked away,
we decided that we might as well take pictures of the cars from outside of the window while we were there. But the Employee came back over
when we passed a red striped gate and shook his finger and told us to leave. Arriving at the Ferrari Building, there were fancy cars
everywhere! Who says machines can't be pretty?