The Jetty

It is not so far from Milan. Not so far from anywhere, really. And yet Lake Como carries the feeling of somewhere entirely removed - from noise, from urgency, from the ordinary. The mountains hold it like cupped hands. The water takes the light and does something extraordinary with it. Three orange chairs wait on a jetty, unhurried, unoccupied. This is Europe at its most itself. Old. Considered. Quietly magnificent. You know exactly where you are.