In Bellagio
A tale of a scarf, a squirrel, a Venetian, and George Clooney ... all along Lake Como
I have a story to tell, and involves a scarf, a squirrel, a Venetian, and George Clooney.
This story begins in a little village on the shores of Lake Como. Now, if you close your eyes and try to imagine the most enchanting place in the world, it’ll probably look a lot like Bellagio. Think terracotta, Italian red, and Tuscan yellow buildings lining cobbled alleyways that climb up the hillside from the lake. These stepped alleyways are called salitas, which translates to “climb” from Italian, so you can’t get more literal than that. And if the rolling landscape surrounding the lake isn’t scenic enough, the snowcapped peaks of the Italian Alps loom majestically over it all.
The village clings to the hillside at the Triangolo lariano of Lake Como, the place where the three branches of the lake meet. Bellagio sits on the tip of this peninsula, at the punta spartivento — meaning “the point that divides the wind.” I spent many hours sitting on a bench there, listening to the wind as if its poetic whispers held some deeper meaning for me.
It's this magic that probably drew me to Bellagio nineteen years ago. I needed some of that magic in my life, at the time. A nearly year-long romance had ended and restarted and ended again. I wasn’t even sure where things stood between me and the man when my ferry pulled into the dock across the street from my hotel. And I’d just turned forty, a number I didn’t mind but that did inspire the usual milestone introspection: What have I done with my life? What do I really want? Who am I?