September 22 -Como, Italy

September 22, 2016 – Como, Italy
I slept 9 hours last night so I feel much better than I did yesterday when I only slept 2 hours on my flight from NY.
We took the 9:30am ferry from Cernobbio to Como. It was a 20 minute ride and Silvia, our tour leader, told us a lot of information about the area.
In Como, Silvia took us on a walking tour and at 11:45am set us free to see and do whatever we wanted. We walked through the Thursday market looking for fruit but only found booths selling clothing or housewares.
Carol and I walked to the funicular which goes up the hillside on the north west side of Como. It was built in1894 and is 3,556 ft long, takes 7 minutes to get to the top, and is at a 55° angle. At the top is the small village of Brunate. Others from our group were just coming to the top when we decided to go back down. Later we found out that George Clooney’s villa is in Brunate.
We had lunch at an outdoor cafe across from the lakefront. Carol had a large Chicken Caesar Salad while I had Gnocchi with ham and cherry tomatoes.
We took the 2:45pm ferry back and stopped for gelato. I tried a flavor called cannonnici which tasted like the custard in European custard cakes.
Tonight we had our Welcome Dinner. We went to a small restaurant by our hotel. We had two big tables and there was lively conversation during the meal.
The internet at our hotel is very slow. To be able to upload photos I resized them to a lower resolution than usual and am limiting myself to 5 photos a day.