Punta Spartivento

This guide to Punta Spartivento on Lake Como opens with the most photographed, and by one local photographer's own admission most badly photographed, view on the lake, the wooden deck where three arms of water meet beneath the Alps. It explains where the name comes from, the point where the wind divides, and how sailors once read the currents here to trim a sail before rounding the point toward Como or Lecco. You'll hear a local photographer's account of coming back at six in the morning, before the midday haze rises off the water, and finding the stone stairway that most visitors on the deck never notice. Follow it down toward the pebble beach on the eastern side.