La Calmez­za

So once I found myself some­where in North Italy again. Was nei­ther a planned trip nor I went there for some spe­cif­ic rea­son. I guess the ulti­mate rea­son was that it’s the first and cheap­est train.

This is some­thing par­tic­u­lar in Italy. In the days I used to live there I nev­er stepped into a place and felt there was no his­to­ry here. You see, Lom­bar­dia is a region fair­ly more devel­oped and did catch up with the con­tem­po­rary age. But even here you can feel, in the kitchen, they still cook their ricetta di non­na.

Lec­co is a very small town by Como Lake, and Como is famous for hav­ing the house of George Clooney on the lake. There are a lot of small towns around Lago di Como which I have been also in Varen­na Esino and Bel­la­gio, there are cou­ple of trans­porta­tion options over the lake or with train, real­ly nice restau­rants and cute small pieces of local archi­tec­ture. Still the atmos­phere almost makes you feel like there is an invis­i­ble fog and you are walk­ing on the fic­tion­al clouds.

Whole scene is a heav­en for a land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Lake is sur­round­ed by glam­orous moun­tains; each one of them huge and far and light dances over the water near the foothills. It cre­ates a whole play of shad­ows. Sense of time would be lost and plans would be for­got­ten as long as you walk in the small town or by the lake.

Col­or changes immense­ly between a cafe break. When you are out night falls and you sim­ply can­not move because around evening time when the dark blue sky ris­es the invis­i­ble fairy­land fog dis­ap­pears and you find a very clear and lucid view. It cre­ates a feel­ing that it is from glass that makes you scared to touch. The yel­low and orange street lights appear as a final touch on a painting.

One def­i­nite­ly feels some sort of mag­ic near this lake. It has a char­ac­ter that calls you back, invites you to stay. But again, where not in Italy…