Crossing Lake Como with bikers

On day 2 of the Italian road trip, south of Basel, we entered the 17km long Gotthard tunnel that bores under the Alps and pops you out in Italian Switzerland - to drive alongside the beautiful Lago di Lugano with gorgeous homes on the edge of the lake surrounded by mountains. 

Lugano is right on the border with Italy; we cross over and minutes later have the first sightings of serene Como in muted shades of blue and green under an overcast sky.

At Cadenabbia we drive onto a car ferry. 

These ferries cross the lake every half hour and we're waved on with little concern for order, cars and motorbikes filling up the boat deck higgeldy piggeldy, Italian style. At the back, with a fabulously un-British finger to health and safety there's a basically pointless loose rope across the open end of the boat, where the bikers are standing and chatting.

As we pull away from the west side of Como lake, we join everyone else on the roof deck of the ferry 

(including a wee and clearly cosseted dog)

from where we have perfect views of a receding Cadenabbio, where Mary Shelley stayed and lingered - was she one of the first of the 19th century Brits to become obsessed with the beauty and quality of life in Italy?

and watch the 'pearl of Como', Bellagio, drawing near

The wee pooch sped off the ferry in a stylish open-top red car, bound for who knew what Sunday adventure.

Byron adored Bellagio and Flaubert declared that one could 'live and die here', but could we find the smallest sliver of a parking space?

Sadly no, so it was onwards and upwards along the coastal shore of this uniquely gorgeous lake, where locals were soaking up the last of the summer sun on jetties and tiny beaches

looked over by peeling ochre mansions and olive trees

Lake Como, Italy, September 2016

Road trip

When the journey is at least as much the point as the destination, when you can see three countries in one day, isn't a road trip just the best?

France: misty dawn at 6.30 am on the road from Épernay, leaving the capitale du champagne's vineyards behind and heading north-east into Alsace-Lorraine.

Via Nancy and Metz, the road climbs into the mountains of the Vosges, before we turn south before Strasbourg, through historically German territory, hugging the German border.

Crossing the border at Basel, we're in Switzerland and suddenly it's a different territory altogether: neat A-framed houses and the cleanest cows you'll ever see, dotted against the greenest meadows. They seem to polish the grass here and line up the trees in tidy rows. Ordnung muss sein.

Spotless, efficient motorways bisect picture postcard scenes of mountains and lakes.

No winding detours here - wide, well-lit tunnels cut straight under the mountains. (A road tax demanded at the Swiss border ensures you pay for the privilege of using, and maintaining, these beautiful roads). 
The Gotthard tunnel is 17 kms long, making it the third longest in the world. Boring directly through the Gotthard mountain, it gets you from central Switzerland to within a whisker of Milan in 15 minutes.

And before you know it, you're in Italy ...

... and marvelling again at how striking the difference can be from the moment of crossing a border - from the gently chaotic infrastructure to the faded romantic houses clustered haphazardly on winding roads.

Late afternoon there's a haze on Lake Como and the day's driving is over.

Time for a campari maybe, with a view over the lake 

Resident kitten, lake views and Italian design at Villa Nina B&B, Carate Urio, Lago di Como

Ristorante La Baia, Moltrasio, Lago di Como