Finally, A Town Loony

Oops - I only today realized that I hadn't finished up my Lake Como series. We had one final day on the lake, which we'd thought we'd spend going to the town of Verona. Then we realized it was almost two hours away, so instead, we slept in. Then, feeling like we needed to actually make use of one last day but with me hobbling from our hike the day before, we elected to visit the lake town of Aregno - mainly because the ferry ride was almost an hour. I was quite excited to be doing something that involved sitting down for an entire hour. The appeal in Aregno was a cable car up, up, up to the hill top town of Pigra. After getting off the ferry and rushing to the cable car (because it only runs on the half hour), we found that it was closed until 2pm, a fact I later remembered reading and actually writing down on my "Things to Do on Lake Como" list. I blame the pain in my calves for pushing out all other rational thought. A nice, little lunch in Aregno's small piazza occupied our time before we headed back to the terrifying cable car. We lurched our way up the first few yards, making all of us in the cable car rethink the decision to be in it.

But after a little ride with phenomenal views, we reached Pigra. Absolutely nothing going on there. Nothing at all. With one major exception. This guy kept rollerblading around town blowing some sort of toy horn contraption. We were delighted to dub him the Town Loony. I still long for one of the best TV shows ever, "Gilmore Girls," so we often have names for people who seem to be right out of Stars Hollow. Pigra's Town Loony is one such character. We're pretty sure we found his house as well, but sadly, I did not get a good photo. It was decorated with all kinds of animal skulls and signs about dinosaurs...and I almost forgot about the odd, ghost figure hung up by a noose.

Pigra itself seemed to have lots of artsy type residents as many of the yards had sculptures and such hanging about. Other than that, there was a nice trail (that I think may have actually been a cowpath) that wandered thru some woods on top of the mountain and opened up to one, nice viewpoint. But really, the best activity in Pigra is sitting on this bench overlooking the lake vista while listening to the off-key horn of Town Loony. And that completed our wonderful, relaxing getaway on Lake Como, surely one of the most beautiful spots in Italy.