Jamie’s Travels

After our long journey across Switzerland we had to have another long bus journey. It was fairly uneventful as it was late in the evening although Lawrence did fall over when he picked up my bag as he expected it to be heavier than it was and braced himself wrong. It was a good chuckle at the end of a delirious day.

The hostel was very friendly. It’s the first time I’ve stayed somewhere with staff that like to banter around with the guests. My favourite was overhearing one guy tell a whole group of travellers that they were at the wrong hostel…

We went up to our room only to find there was just one bed. Me and Lawrence are good mates but I think we both draw the line at sharing a single. It took a while but eventually they sorted out what was going on. In the meantime we had a very reasonably priced dinner at the hostel (they were very accommodating considering we arrived at nearly 10pm). Vegan caprasi salad for myself. After dinner we got our rooms and hung out in the bar till they shut, then we headed to another bar close by and met an Icelandic girl named Vivian. She was very nice and curious to hear about what topical English politics and me and Lawrence’s love lives. She also bought us vodka-ginger beers. She was a traveler as well except she was remote working for crypto.com as she went. Seems like a fun way to do your job.

For our full day in Como we started with a swim in the lake. The lake is stunning from anywhere you look, in any weather. It simply doesn’t get old. After swimming we headed for a walk around the town we stayed in – Menaggio. It’s a nice place but annoyingly all the shops shut at midday till 4pm. Therefore lunch was gelato.

After we rented ourselves a kayak for a couple hours. We had a great time paddling down the side of the lake, occasionally taking a dip if it got too hot. Charlie and Milan gave me a ring while I was out there too, it was nice to hear from them. The ferries in the lake create great wakes whenever they pass, this meant kayaking was quite tricky but it ultimately was a fun challenge.

We had dinner at the hostel again that night. While we ate we met two Dutch men who were motor biking across Europe. They told us that every year they get on their bikes in the first week of September and go for a trip. It sounds fantastic. They never know where they’re going, they pick a direction and go. They provided us with good entertainment for the evening. One of them was even from Harlem. They nicely offered us some of the wine (the best red I’ve ever had) and, horrified I’d never tried it, bought us lemonchelo as well. They really were great company and I’m determined some day I’ll go travelling in my future convertible and buy a couple nice drinks for some young travellers myself.

After Bert and Dion left to get ready to bike off in the morning we found Vivian who had finished her remote work for the day. After a brief stress of trying to work out where we would stay the night after we headed back to the bar. We watched the thunder over the lake and explained to Vivian about the Piers-Megan drama and why people in Sheffield like Artic Monkeys, she seemed interested at least. About ready to pass out at this point, I headed to bed.

We decided in the morning it would be more interesting to take the ferry instead of a bus. Despite its higher price and longer travel time it was surely worth it. On the trip though a good portion of the lake we saw many sites such as a Vila used for filming in Star Wars and George Clooneys house. It really did have a lot of incredible views. The ferry pulled up to the town of Como and from there we got the train off the Milan.