Giro di Lombardia Part 1

We loaded (and I mean loaded - two bikes in the back seat plus our luggage, etc) into the CycleItalia Fiat Panda and headed off to a hotel perched near the top of the famous climb to Madonna del Ghisallo to await the legendary race tomorrow (Saturday). But first we stopped for pranzo on the way. Our "bible" Osterie d'Italia (the SlowFood Guidebook) payed for itself again when we found (and trust us, you'd NEVER find this place unless you were looking for it!) Crotto del Sergento, just outside the town of Como. They had a midday feature, a piatto unico (not one of Larry's favorite concepts but...) we tried two of them as you can see here, one with a classic spaghetti with tomato sauce and a grilled steak, the other with a pasta we could not quite identify but it was good, along with a piece of baccala cooked with capers, tomato and olive. Really good, especially with the Tuscan Sangiovese included. We did splurge for a dessert we forgot to photograph, a luscious chocolate "foccacia" with vanilla sauce. After an excellent caffe we were back on the road towards Bellagio and onto the race course for tomorrow. You can see the view from our hotel room, if the weather's awful tomorrow we can see a lot of the race from here and the rest from the big screen TV downstairs!