I just got back from a fantastic holiday. My friends Colin, Christian and I had been planning it for a while - a week of walking in Italy and Switzerland. Spending our first night at Como, making our way up Lake Como to Menaggio for another night, heading on to Switzerland: two nights in St Moritz, dropping back down to Locarno, the southernmost town in Switzerland, before our final two nights in Zermatt. It was a packed itinerary, and we hired a car to take us to our destinations: a lovely italian Alpha Romeo Mito - a sporty wee thing which barely fit all three of us plus luggage.
We flew into Milan late on Saturday night. It was pouring with rain so we threw our luggage into the car and shot straight off to Como. Como is a lovely town at the Southern tip of Lake Como, Italy. It is THE location for summer homes (George Clooney has one, but we didn't see him there) and luckily it wasn't raining when we arrived. After a quick check-in at the hotel, we headed out for a late dinner. We settled ourselves in a restaurant on the lake shore and relaxed with a bottle of red wine, squid carpaccio, and prosciutto with buffalo mozzarella before sinking our teeth into divine Italian pizzas. After dinner we wandered along the shore. The Saturday evening atmosphere was fantastic, and there was a band playing in one of the piazzas so we sat down at a nearby bar and shared a bottle of prosecco before meandering back to the hotel.
Sunday morning we explored Como in the daylight, before driving up the Western coast of Lake Como 
to Menaggio. We parked the car in Menaggio and caught the ferry across the lake to Belaggio, where we had a leisurely lunch and went for a lovely walk to Pescalio where we had lovely views down the lake. We returned to Menaggio on the boat and the boys, mad men that they are, headed out for a run while I explored the town and sussed out a place for us to have dinner. We relaxed over dinner before heading back to the hostel for the night.
We were up early the next morning to climb Monte Grona. The day was hot and sunny and we drove along hairpin bends to Breglia to start the walk. We followed signs up to the Refugio Menaggio, a mountain centre at 1400m on the Southern slope of Monte Grona. At the Refugio we had a coffee and a slice of torte before pushing up to the top of Monte Grona for lunch. The summit is at an 
altitude of 1700m and the walk itself is quite exposed, with fantastic views down to Menaggio, Bellagio and beyond. There were a few places where the path was narrow with steep drop off, and as Christian suffers from vertigo he needed a bit of coaxing. The last couple of meters required some rock climbing, but there were chains to help you up. Both Christian and I made it to the very summit, but Colin decided against the last scramble and scouted out the lunch spot. The views from the top of Monte Grona are amazing. On one side they sweep down to Lake Como, and down to the lakes on the other side. The walk itself was incredibly steep, and hard work in the hot sun, but definitely worth it.
That afternoon we left Italy and drove to St Moritz, Switzerland.
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