It felt slightly kidnapped-like, held in the backseat of Camille’s rental Fiat as we zoomed out of Paris headed south. Camino was happy napping in his travel house, so I was alone with my foreboding that somehow my sister/my captor would convince me to try something reckless and ridiculous once we arrived in Chamonix. It was only November, so ice-climbing surely was out, wasn’t it? In the front seats Camille and Jacqueline were giggly and giddy to be in France, popping Werther’s caramels and guzzling Coke Zeros to cope with their jetlag.
“I thought we’d go to Lake Como on our way,” Camille announced, to my relief. Lake Como! Yes, the glacial lake in Lombardy, Italy known for grand, waterfront villas that, in the 18th century, housed European nobles on their grand tours and today are home to George Clooney, Madonna, Richard Branson, and others of the mega-rich set. No mountain-cliff biking there! We could rent a pretty, little weekend villa and savor the very lake that Julius Ceasar in Roman times created by draining a swamp at its southwestern end, strategically located near Alpine passes; we could shop for wow Italian items – sweaters, scarves, bags – and pasta it up in a big way in Como, the very town Caesar created as Novum Comum. The giardini pensili or gardens built on the Roman walls that once guarded the city center were storied to be kick-ass bellissima, and the waterfront path that had to be there sounded like the perfect thing. We could walk and walk – Camille’s style would be to march all day and into the night – and I’d still be on sacred pilgrimage, loosely speaking. Maybe not in the actual company of, say, Camino trekker Bill, as step by slow step he poked along a particularly flat, featureless, endless, boring stretch of trail known as the Meseta, but certainly in spirit. As he reports:
For me, the Meseta proved to be transcendent. I loved its clear, straight lines. I loved its expansiveness. I loved its solitude. It the place where I came closest to the true nature of the Camino. It’s where I felt the presence of energies and influences beyond my understanding. It had laid me bare. And in that naked state, as though I were a newborn, I’d begun to believe there could be a God.
Walking around Lake Como…well, could there be any trek that sounded more heaven-sent?
“We could also do Megève.” Now Camille was really taking my mind off fears of dying while rock-climbing. “Val d’Isère and Tignes, too.”
“Tignes, too??” As lifelong skiers, we believed these resorts were as glamorous as they come. They epitomized French-Alp life – winter wonderlands where beautiful people and beautiful pleasures came together in skiing so dreamy that, if we ever had the chance to take advantage of this glamour, we’d barely be able to speak of it: It would be that…well, beautiful. Alas, it wasn’t yet ski season; snow was nowhere in the Alps, except perhaps on the infamous Mer de Glace glacier 6,000 feet above the village of Chamonix. This meant that skiing might happen only if Camille coerced me into renting crampons and climbing to the glacier’s peak while shouldering my skis so we could kill ourselves on a descent via prehistoric cliffs, crags, and crevasses. No, thank you. “Maybe they’ll offer Autumn gondola rides, and we can picnic at the top of a run in the sun!” I suggested a delightful alternative to death.
“We’ll see.”
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“Camino, look!” I lifted-up the kitty’s crate so he could see out the window and form his own impressions of Lake Como. The view was of a cluster of big-bottomed, bright-clothed tourists dragging big-ass suitcases not unlike mine that were struggling to trudge clear of traffic. The entrance to their hotel was…where? As we traveled the lake’s perimeter road in search of a room we could call our own, it was difficult to partake of the “stunning natural beauty, elegant towns, and luxurious villas” our Google map was describing. What’s more, the “charming villages” (Bellagio, Varenna, Como), lake waters (“deep and blue”), and “dramatic mountain scenery” seemed more AI-authored make-believe than actual Lake Como fact.
“I think I see a glint of shimmering water down there,” I said to offer Camille and Jacqueline a boost of hope that, no, the place was not entirely trudging tourists in search of a bench, at least, upon which to plop their big bottoms so they, like us, could contemplate the Lake Como conundrum. That is, where do we little people sleep? Where do we bourgeoisie eat? Certainly, commoners such as us in our rental car littered with Werther’s wrappers can experience Lake Como – on our level, of course – maybe not at the Clooneys’ lakefront villa, but perhaps in a lakeview café? Certainly, we, too, could linger over lunch under an umbrella on a sunny terrasse, join a cocktail cruise, or promenade arm-in-arm along a lovely public path?
“Asshole!!” The car suddenly jerked left in a sharp swerve, as Camille avoided collision with a motorcyclist who had cut her off in his effort not to mow down another cluster of rollerbag-dragging people who had nowhere else to walk except on the road’s skinny shoulder. Others, with nowhere to eat, stood awkwardly roadside and gobbled make-do ham sandwiches retrieved from their backpacks; traffic whizzed past like it was the finals of the Mille Miglia motorsport endurance race. “Jeez. Mr. Branson must not be expecting us at his Villa La Cassinella, or he would have sent a car.” Or boat.
“If we knew Donatella Versace, we maybe then might get a room.” I couldn’t believe Lake Como actually would shut out visitors as lovely as us. I mean, even the rollerbagers did not look homeless, for heaven’s sake. Yet here we were, all of us not enjoying a plate of Penne all’Arrabbiata on a sunny lakeside terrasse or imbibing elegant Bellinis on the water while cruising by the very villas for which Lake Como is legendary: D’Este, Erba, Vontanelle, Pliniana, Oleandra, and Balbianello. Here we were also not even stopping, for phooey to the Clooneys of the world who live in walled, guarded, and isolated luxe so very luxe that there is no room left in Lake Como, evidently, for a lakeside promenade, a lakeview café, or a lake-close albergo to welcome visiting plebeians.
Arrivederci, Madonna! We kept driving. And in only 30 minutes, we arrived. The pristine lake, deep and blue; the dramatic Alps as breathtaking backdrop; the lake promenade and plein air cafés and albergos brightly lit in benvenuto.
“How come Lugano is so much nicer than Lake Como?” I queried Camille who hardly noticed we had left Italy for Switzerland; so focused was she on the sky that any suggestion now of a cocktail cruise would, I knew, be foolish. As the kidnapped/captive of the backseat, Camino and I did not have that much of a say in Camille’s and Jacqueline’s plans, especially since the childproof locks on the Fiat’s rear doors were jammed, so kitty and I could not get out without permission. At the end of a long, tough day of driving, my sister wanted only her “happy place:” a clean, queen bed in a spacious, clean hotel where the TV had at least 500 channels. After an exploratory trip to a fantastically foreign grocery store, she wanted nothing more than to picnic on the bed, and, it turns out, make a vivid impression on Camino. Still, there was that Lugano sky…
“How long does the ride last, do you think?” Above in the blue melting into dusk colorful kites swooped and circled, each one holding a miniscule person suspended sans engine or propellor or, indeed, plane: paragliders. Camille was dazzled by their daring. Launching off mountaintops and landing, if lucky, in a field, these Alps athletes filled the skies like it was hardly a life-threatening endeavor. Here, they seemed to imply, everyone does it! Learning to paraglide is easy; you can fly solo on your first day! Or so promotes one paragliding school. Really, why just be a dull stone and drop to earth in a parachute when you can let the wind spin you, swoop you, spiral you, or speed you, depending on how you steer with handheld strings? Like dancing.
“Why are you asking me?” I said with suspicion. “I am not going to paraglide.” At the next light I eyed my door handle but knew the childproof lock had me at my sister’s mercy. “I need to take care of Camino until he’s 16 weeks old and can get a flight home.” I added for the sake of her sympathy. “He needs me.”
“So you say.”
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