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One way to get around Italy’s magnificent lakes is to fly in a seaplane. Instead of wheels it’s got floats. It might be slower, but the views are not bad.
At the Aero Club Como Seaplane Base, Europe’s oldest flying school for seaplanes, you can either hire a seaplane or have a pilot take you around. Francesco Cereda, the Chief Instructor, has been at it for 15 years.
It is a wonderful new perspective to see the beauty of the towns from above and the size and reverse ‘Y’ shape of the lake. We flew over George Clooney’s house (the guy can’t be thrilled that he’s part of the route), splashed down near Bellagio where there were no Las Vegas style fountains fortunately, and then flew over Villa Balbianello. All this while flying alongside the mountains that surround Lake Como as well as so low over the towns that you could see the decorations on the buildings.
Landing a plane on water gives a whole new dimension to pilot logistics. The only issue? Splash down on the lake in front of Como consisted of circling over its Cathedral in order lose altitude and prepare the final approach to the water runway. By the second pass over the Cathedral, it felt like we were going to land on top of it.
Contributed by Jean Tori, artist (www.jeantoriartwork.com), who rents holiday houses in her medieval hamlet in Umbria (www.caiporrihomeinumbria.com)
Where were you two years ago , when we wanted to find out about this little plane :-) We were on the lakes for 9 days, staying in Argegno, and we used to watch this. My husband always wondered how you could get a flight…Thanks for info, and have a great break, see you in September.
What a thrill that must have been. We took a funicular up the side of the mountain at Lago di Garda and looking down on that from high up was amazing. I can only imagine having a bird’s eye view over Lake Como!
WOW!!!!
All I have to say about these pictures and the site is WOW!!!
ONE OF MY RELATIVES WHO Was assigned to Como as chief of detectives,,besides giving me a superb ride all around,treated me and two other friends who were with me on a special trip to Switzerland to a great dinner and the best sparkling white wine I ever had.My only remorse is that we couldn,t stay there longer than the few hours we did because of work reasons.I could have lived there for the rest of my life!!!!