We woke up early this morning to be among the first people disembarking the ship. Costa doesn’t offer express walk off (where travelers with only carry-on luggage can disembark as soon as immigration clears the ship), so after collecting our passports, we had to wait in the terminal area for all the luggage to be unloaded. Valerie was concerned that we would miss our train, so she got a port employee to escort us to customs early.

After several hours in the train, we arrived at beautiful Castiglione del Lago. Our friends Karen, Cathy, and Patti whom we met during a previous cruise invited us to visit them at their villa. Karen, John, and Lorraine kindly met us at the train station, where we enjoyed a sorbetto, before driving us to the villa about 3 miles away. The villa was large and spacious (quite different from our usual small hotel room) with great views of the Tuscan hills and lake.

Before dinner, we met the other guests in the villa and played several games of semi-competitive bocce ball while drinking 3-euro bottles of wine from the vineyard next door. For dinner, the owner of the villa organized for a pair of local women to come over and cook everyone an enormous Italian feast. The pasta was the best that we’ve had in Italy (or really anywhere). Karen opened a super-sized bottle of excellent wine from the winery of the Bulgari family (yes, those Bulgaris).

It was very kind of our friends to invite us to the villa. We had a great time and I’m glad that the timing worked out so we were all in Italy at the same time.