The Hobbit House

We drove into Como on Friday evening, after leaving Castelnuovo in the morning and stopping for the afternoon in Cremona. Our friend Vera came straight from work to meet us in the main piazza, and then we all went to have dinner and a walk around. It was dark by the time we finished dinner, and as is the case every evening in Italy, there were crowds of people, of all ages, walking around and having a social hour. On one piazza people were setting up for a rock concert, while in the next piazza a brass ensemble was playing. We looked around for a while, but Vera had to go to a wedding party in Milan, and we were tired from a long day, so we all drove on to nearby Argegno, where the three of us would be staying in Vera's vacation house.

When we got to Argegno, we followed Vera's car way uphill to a tiny parking lot above the town. There, her dad was waiting with another, smaller car. We piled all the suitcases into this car and he drove into the town itself--down a very steep hill (we're getting used to this by now), between very narrow streets. Occasionally we'd hear a thump. We were driving down steps!

But before we got nearly to the bottom of the town, Vera's dad stopped at a little door and got out. As he opened it, he made some polite excuses of the "Oh, it's nothing!" sort, and lead us into Vera's townhouse, which he had renovated himself. Perhaps it was partly that we were so tired, but we were especially delighted by its coziness. "It's a hobbit house!" CZ and I exclaimed, because the first floor was all stone and almost completely underground. There was even a small cupboard with runes on it! In fact, the whole place was a storybook conglomeration of little salvaged odds and ends attached to the walls and hanging from the ceilings. It could have been a hobbit hole, or Badger's home, or Mr. and Mrs. Beavers', with an Italian accent.

As we climbed up the flights of stairs, CZ revised her opinion somewhat. "It's really more like a treehouse, so it's for elves. Hobbits would never live on this many floors." She was right about the treehouse aspect, because the apartment consisted of four storeys, each of them a tiny room, except that the main bedroom (on the third floor) was paired with a bathroom--so the order was living room, kitchen, bedroom/bath, loft. But the name "hobbit house" had stuck, and that's what we call it now when we talk about it amongst ourselves. (Although CZ, being a stickler for accuracy, sometimes mutters, "Elf house!")

The hobbit idea might also have come on because we were so tired from traveling that we felt like hobbits after a day's march, so we went straight to bed.

But here are some photos I took the next morning:

Top to bottom: The front entrance to the townhouse, a view from the entrance, some alpine momentoes (we're only two miles from Switzerland), and two views of the kitchen, one through the wrought iron stairs.

Top to bottom: The main bedroom, with a little window that had to be opened from a ladder, stairs to the loft, and me taking photos of myself in the bathroom mirror.

Top to bottom: The main bedroom as seen from the loft, and the loft itself, which is above the bathroom.

The next morning we woke up to bells and the usual crying swifts. These weren't just any bells, though, but bells that played various complete songs at different hours. CZ went around humming them and wrote a couple of them down in her notebook while we were there. (She also practiced in her loft, and once, after a pause, there was applause from the street below!) After the bells, we started hearing people walk by, and occasionally we heard motorcycles and even a car or two. (Thump...thump.) I was so curious that I had to get up and look! (And besides, I was hungry and there was no food in the house.) When I opened the window, we were in the middle of a tiny hill town, and yes, there was a stepped street below. A few houses down, the street narrowed even more, so much that even the ubiquitous Italian Panda couldn't have gotten through it.

We went out early and found a cafe by the lake for our morning coffee and brioche. Our weekend at Lake Como had begun. But more about that later...

Vera's house, as seen the next morning