North Italy Road Trip

     December 26th we headed north for a family road trip. First stop: Modena.  Lots of people asked us, "Why are you going to Modena? What's in Modena?" We chose Modena because it is very close to Ferrari, Lambourghini and Ducati factories/museums. 
     Modena was very quiet.  Not much was happening in the town,etc.  We stayed in a nice hotel-the staff was very kind!  The first morning we drove out to Lambourghini.  It was awesome to see the show room from a distance.  So many beautiful cars in one place!!  I was so excited!  We drove in to find parking.  The man outside the museum stopped us and told us the museum was....CLOSED! Ahhhh!!  The website did not share this information.  I guess I should have called first but Aaron reminded me that no one would have answered the phone anyway.  I was definitely disappointed.. :-(
  So, back in the car to drive to Maranello for the Ferrari museum.  It was awesome!  Words won't do it justice so see pictures below and on my FB page :-) Actually, we went to 2 Ferrari museums for the price of 1,essentially. (We always love to enjoy the good deals) The 2nd museum was of Enzo Ferrari's house and an exhibition building where they change out the cars every 6 months.
  Along with seeing the museum, we splurged and paid for a test drive in a Ferrari.  That was a fun experience! Even though I didn't get to drive it, it was fun to ride in it!  So fun!

 These were some of the cars that people, really rich people, could rent.

 Below, me with my favorite car of the whole museum..pretty...(the car :-)

Above: wax sculpture of Enzo and a quick view of the exhibition hall

Juliann and Race in the back seat while Aaron drove the California. (video on FB)

We stayed in Modena for 2 nights then we drove to Lake Como. I didn't know much about Lake Como but my friend, Robin, told me she had always wanted to go there so I was encouraged to check it out. Since it wasn't that long of a drive and it is very close to Switzerland, we decided it would be a good destination. We stayed in Cernobbio-SW side of the lake. The lake is shaped like an upside down 'Y'. We were a short distance away from the city of Como-of which the lake got its name.

The hotel we stayed in was like an old house. It was very rustic with single pane windows, original wood doors and some antique furniture. Everyone was so nice there! The restuarant was good too. In fact, we had the best tasting food there over everywhere we ate in the area.
The first day we took a boat trip from Como to Bellagio. It was 60 euros one way...kinda spendy. We were told it would be worth it so we did it. The boat ride would have been more fun if we could have gone outside of the boat but that wasn't an option. Bellagio was pretty but we were done exploring the area within an hour. We would have left then but there were no other boats for 5 more hours! We had already purchased our return tickets when we discovered we could have gone back on the bus for 12 euros. Tried to return our boat tickets but the cashier said we could have if we had been 10 minutes earlier. I should have cried..I hear tears talk here..haha. oh well
It was a little hard to kill so much time in an area where very few shops were open and nothing was happening. It was pretty there, though. However, we all agreed that it was wonderful that we did not go back earlier because we met a great family on the boat ride back to Como! I think we could have spent more time than just during the boat ride, visiting with the Sher family! We connected with them via FB and hope to continue to keep in touch. And work on our Italian with them too :-)

 There were some interesting things around the lake that, normally, visitors can enter and peruse but all of those places were closed during our visit.

 Church in Cernobbio

 Bellagio. Race fed the ducks some of his Tiramisu snack cake.  Juliann enjoyed all the birds around the area too.

 Above:Como at night.  We ate at El Sombrero restaurant. We were really hoping for something like Mexican but, NO, only Italian. I really wanted to ask someone what the significance of the name was..it teased us.

    
     Switzerland and Florence in the next post...