Family Holiday

Friends of ours with their 2 children stayed in Nesso in August and sent us some of their pictures.
This is a lovely picture taken from right by where the ferry stops in Nesso.

On one of the days they took the ferry over to Argengo and then took the cable car up to Pigra….

The cable car is quite old and quaint, but rather like going up in a ski lift….they shut for a while around midday, so it’s good to check the times up and down….As you can see, you get an amazing view….as long as you are OK with heights!

When you get up to Pigra, apart from the amazing views, you can walk from there and get a meal in the village.
Another recommended day out was to take the ferry over to Lenno (which is just next to Villa Balbienello, where they filmed some scenes from Star Wars-Attack of the Clones). There’s a beach (lido) there with a bar, and restaurant….

As you can see….a good time was had by all! Lido di Lenno

Another place we’d heard about, but haven’t been to ourselves, is the Jungle Raider Park. It’s a fantastic adventure park, which is really a big obstacle course in the trees.
It’s not far from Nesso (in Civenno Park, Piano Rancio near Magreglio) and the team there are very hot on the safety and also speak English.
Mick, Joe and Amy had a great time up in the trees…here’s Joe doing his stuff, looking like he’s been raiding jungles all his life! Not sure that this is a typically Italian pastime, but good fun!

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Mushrooms and Chestnuts

We were in Nessoat the end of September. The weather was still lovely and on a couple of days it was up to 26C. A lot of of our friends and neighbours were very busy going out into the woods mushroom picking; one friend explained that the moon was right so he was going first thing in the morning. Another neighbour had an amazing collection of different types and explained exactly how each one should be used eg. this should be fried with steak…. We’re a tad hesitant about venturing forth collecting mushroom ourselves, as we’re not sure how to decide which ones are edible and that’s not a mistake that you want to make! However next year I think that we have to get someone to take us up in the woods above Nesso and show us what we can pick.
There were plenty of chestnuts on the paths around Nesso. It’s another big thing in the area at this time of year and I was tempted to collect some to take home for chestnut stuffing. They are a big Italian export and they feature in recipes from Lombardy (Lake Como is in Lombardy)
I’ll finish with this picture I took while we were there, a rather lovely view from the lakeside garden, looking down the lake towards Como.

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What’s a Nibbo Bruno?

My partner used to live in an apartment on Lake Como in the village of Nesso. Nibbio Bruno is the Italian word for Black Kite and there are a number that live nearby and can be seen diving for fish outside the apartment window. I love to photograph them and am convinced that one deliberately taunts me, by flying close to the living room windows when I’ve managed to leave my camera in another room, or have the wrong lens attached! However I love to try and get better and better images of him and will just keep trying.

We had a bit of a time trying to get the correct Italian name for him. A number of neighbours said he was a Poiana, but that appeared to be the translation for Buzzard. There are also a number of different dialect words from the different villages that added to the confusion. But finally having looked at some pictures and researched a bit, we decided that he is a Black Kite (Milvus migrans) and that the Italian is Nibbio Bruno….at least that’s what we are calling the one that flies past the apartment in the village of Nesso and sometimes fails to catch his fish. Just to confuse things even more, bruno is Italian for brown……

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