Como, bathrooms and a picture from the past

Looks like spring is seriously making an appearance here in the north of Italy. Today, I was actually sorry I had taken a warm coat with me.... It was a beautiful, clear day. A wind finally blew yesterday and cleared the smog filled air over Milan and the blue skies appeared. Milan sits in this kind of flat basin and the air has a tendency not to move very much (Paola told me that her father says that the leaves here fall off the trees only when the new ones push them off, because there's no wind to blow the old ones off the trees...). Since the pollution here is quite considerable this turns the sky into this murky grey stuff. Most days, you can't see the mountains, which are really not that far from here. But, as I said, yesterday it suddenly became nice and clear and this meant that today I headed out to the mountains - I went to Como which is about an hour away from here by train.

I visited Como many years ago - almost 18 years ago to be exact with Hagit F. It rained like nothing you can imagine and the beauty of Como was a bit lost. We even tried going on the lake that time but the lake is a bit depressing when it rains... Anyway, today the lake was really magnificant. I took a funicular up to a little village called Brunate and from there hiked (a pretty steep hike, especially for someone who's been walking the flat streets of Milan for months now...) up to a place called San Maurizio. There's a light house there and a magnificant view down to the lake and across to the snow covered mountains around. I climbed up the lighthouse (of course...) and sat for a while in the sun which was nice. I think that in a week or so - the place will be even more beautiful - since now most of the trees still don't have any leaves on them and therefore the mountains looks sort of greyish. A few, what seemed to be almond trees had started to bloom but all the rest still haven't received the message that spring is here.

Coming down from the village on the mountain - there were a million people walking around the lake, motorcycles, cars, what have you. I can't even begin to imagine what this place is like in the summer...


I've added some pictures from this glorious day (the pictures above are views from the top of the mountain down to Lake Como). Definitely worth the trip....








This is a view from the top of the lighthouse at San Maurizio down (for those who don't believed I actually climbed to the top...).

I asked someone to take my picture here, under the lighthouse. Notice the color of the mountains behind, as I said, the trees will start getting green soon and then it would be even prettier.



and now due to public demand and since my brother got me a book about the architecture of toilets around the world to which special thought was given (not your hole in the ground kind of places...) and because some felt they didn't get a complete view of my apartment - since the bathrooms were not included in the pictures - here they are in all their glory:


On the left is the blue bathroom - mostly for guests and
on the right - the pink bathroom, which I use

(I like the color....)

and finally for this edition of my blog, a look at my past, very far past.... When I was at the exhibition in Barcelona, at some point I was introduced to an Israeli businessman, and the guy introducing said - this is... and I said his name. They asked me, do you know him? and I said - we were in the same class during 2nd grade in elemantry school. After the show he surprised me by sending me the following picture:

and the riddle for this edition of my blog - where am I in this picture? and the bonus question is - who else that some of you know is in this picture? The guy whom I met at the exhibition is right in front of me. By the way, if memory serves my friend who's also in this picture - it was her mother who took this picture many many years ago....