Como: water and rocks

In Italy, August becomes a month of the exodus, to a point I've never seen before. Yes, also in other countries a lot of people take holidays in July and August, but here it seems to be on a true mass scale: shops and restaurants close for weeks (there must be a special template for the "closed for holidays" signpost), public transport goes on a summer (=nonexistent) schedule, and cities becomes deserted. Where normally you would see parking in a double (or triple) row, now there is an empty space with an occasional car. I imagine that this is what apocalypse would look like.

Good luck finding an shop or bar open in August - all closed for holiday. 

Staying around in August seems to be the win-win solution - workplace is relaxed, there's no traffic, and some ice-cream shops are still open.

Plus, you get to enjoy at least one free day, thanks to a thing called Ferragosto - a public holiday in mid-August (and what seems to be a reference point in the Italian summer calendar). I spent a long time thinking Ferragosto must have something to do with iron (ferrum), until I found out that it was the ancient Romans (again) behind its origin, with their Festivals of the Emperor Augustus, or Feriae Augusti, established 18 B.C. - hence Ferragosto. It seems that wherever you look, ancient Romans just always came first.

In this case Ferragosto meant a long weekend, and so together with a few friends we headed to Como, up in the north on the border with Switzerland. Yes, that place where George Clooney got a house on a lakeshore.

Lake Como. Looking right...

... looking left... but still not seeing George Clooney. Not sure why that could be

I kind of get it why - it's a really pretty pretty place, with hills rising up from the lake, and small villages built into the slopes (though I'm guessing that the celebrities are more after the sumptuous villas than the steep stone streets of lakeside villages).

On the downside, I felt that the abundance of expensive cars (including those very expensive flat ones) and the bubble-world of their owners, mixed with (related or not) disregard for basic needs of some people (dozens of migrants have been dumped for several months in tents in a park in Como, with little or no access to essential services like sanitation) creates not a very humane atmosphere. 

Our long weekend, though, was splendid. We split the time more or less evenly between relaxing at the lakeside...

... and (how else with this group) climbing. Or, ehm, in my case at least to trying to.

Nope, that's definitely not me on the wall

Good life, this.