DAY 11
It’s very disorienting at first to go from Milan, the fifth largest city in Europe, to a tiny village like Bellagio, but it’s so soothing and charming that it’s like experiencing the full flavor of a fine bottle of Balvenie scotch. The air smells like fresh water and fragrant flowers. The people are happy and welcoming. The pace is slow and almost dreamy. It’s a place that whispers seductively to you, “Come and sit a spell. We’d love to have you.”
After Milan it was reassuring not to see police and soldiers. And nary a siren was heard during our brief stay. Apparently Lake Como is not a target for terrorists or criminals.
In America, when you pass any place where hard work is being done — a construction site or road work, and especially landscaping — the laborers are invariably Latino. In Italy the manual labor — in fact, ALL labor or service industry jobs — is done by pure bred Italians. The only jobs performed by immigrants — mostly Africans and Arabs — are mobile street vendors, hawking umbrellas and cheap scarves.
We took our dirty laundry to a very friendly lady who ran a laundromat next to a steak house named Baba Yaga, a terrible ogre from Russian folklore. And while we were visiting the nearby towns she cleaned and folded our laundry and then delivered it to our hotel where it was waiting for us upon our return at the end of the day.
Lake Como has a lot of the same things you will find in the U.S.: the same trees (sycamores, magnolias, and pines); the same birds (mute swan, mallards, and scavenging house sparrows); the same flowers (geraniums, begonias, and roses); the same boats (Boston Whalers, kayaks, and Lasers); and yet for some inexplicable reason it’s ALL so much more enticing and captivating. It’s like someone cast a magic spell over the the whole lake.
The slow ferry from Como to Bellagio takes two hours. Once in Bellagio your best bet for a can’t miss day is to get the all day ferry pass called “Centro Di Lago”. And when you buy your ferry tickets ask what pier your ferry leaves from because there are passenger and car ferries going everywhere around the lake. They run until 8 PM.
Around noon we boarded the Lago di Como Hop On Hop Off ferry. It cost 15€ per person and took us to five towns along the lake, cruising slowly in a big circle.
Our first stop was right across the lake at the largest city in the area, Varenna. The harbor sits in a secluded break-watered bay ringed with small specialty shops selling clothes and souvenirs. And there is a picturesque stone walkway along the water’s edge that leads into the commercial center of town where most of the restaurants and the church plaza are located.
Most folks get off the ferry and are quickly drawn to the harbor walk. So the trick for the business owners around the harbor is to entice the visitors to sit and stay awhile. And in order to accomplish this, they placed colorful cushions on the steps so people could lounge a bit after maybe buying some ice cream or a bite to eat.
Given how steep, narrow, and winding the Lake Como roads are with their hairpin turns and crazy Italian drivers who consider passing on a blind turn to be a blood sport, there were many bicyclists — even long distance riders loaded down with panniers and hauling camping gear. I ride a bike as my primary form of transportation when back home in Annapolis and I have ridden twice across the U.S., and I don’t think I could push a bike up the nearly-vertical hills of northern Italy. And I wouldn’t even think about riding the suicidal main roads along the lake.
On the ferry to Menaggio we ran into two guys who had started riding their bikes in Munich, about 300 miles away, and were heading for Lugano, Switzerland. They were camping out and they said it was a very hard ride, especially since they had to stay off the main roads, and navigating the back roads of Italy was extremely confusing. Their ride out from the ferry terminal was up, up, and away and it didn’t look like fun at all — even going downhill would be dangerous as hell. And that’s the thing; there is no flat; it’s either straight up or straight down. We wished them well and found a lakeside restaurant at the Hotel du Lac.
After Menaggio, we caught the ferry to Villa Carlotta, a three-floor, white Italianate villa at the edge of the lake that was doing a land office business. It was too nice a day to play inside, so we walked along the lakeside stone pathway into the tiny village of Tremezzo.
The small villages along Lake Como are fun places to explore or just sit and watch the world go by. The small churches are timeless. The bright little stores are — the word that comes to mind is happy. And just when you think you have seen it all, you come around a corner or walk up a narrow stone alley and some centuries old stone house covered in flowery vines or a tree-framed vista of the lake will take your breath away.
We caught the 6:20 ferry from Tremezzo to Bellagio, a fifteen minute cruise, as the sun dropped hazily into the Alps in god knows what country — probably still Italy, but maybe Switzerland. We had been going in circles all day, we didn’t have a map, and there was no Internet connection. The only thing we knew for certain was that wherever we were, it was darn pretty.
We had spent a whole day bopping around Lake Como and we had visited four lovely villages: Varenna, Menaggio, and Villa Carlotta, Tremezzo. And for a mere 30€. Deals don’t come easy in Italy, but this was a good one indeed.
From afar, the villages of Lake Como — and there are shitloads of them — all pretty much look the same. And up close, they are very similar — one little church with a tall bell tower; a central plaza with small boats, tourist shops and restaurants; ancient stone steps climbing steeply up to level two where the villagers live and shop; and then the uptown villas of the filthy rich painted across the mountain sides in the mist and clouds. I don’t mean to downplay the unique beauty of the Lake Como hoods; I just think it’s like the stunning churches of Rome; after you have seen them over and over again, the magic begins to fade a bit.
But, of all the Lake Como towns we saw, Bellagio was by far the nicest because it sits at the end of a point and the main road doesn’t go beyond town, so there isn’t the constant pass through traffic you find in all the other towns. Bellagio has a reputation as being a destination for the wealthy and well-heeled traveler. Interestingly, when we were there, we encountered few Americans. It was mostly Germans, French, Brits, and Aussies. And this was the first place we have been in Europe that there were virtually no Chinese. Not sure why. I think maybe they were all in Venice.
After spending ten hours cruising Lake Como by ferry and and exploring a myriad of storybook Italian villages via their Stairmaster streets, our heads and bodies were spent. The sun had set and the last thing we wanted to do was go roaming around Bellagio, looking for a restaurant to eat dinner. At that point, what we really craved was to retreat to our hotel, strip down, and hang out on our bowling alley-size balcony overlooking the always entertaining waterfront as we sipped some exceptional red wine and ate the cheese and meats we had purchased the day before at the market. Who could ask for anything more?
Walked 6 miles
Insider Tip — The Visitor Center in Bellagio is located in the passenger (not the car) Ferry Boat Terminal. You can pick up several good walking tour guides there along with other helpful information about fun things to do and see around the area.
Insider Tip — If you need to do laundry, do it yourself at a self-service laundromat because laundries charge by the kilo to do it for you and that can get expensive real fast. I’m thinking they weigh it when it’s wet.
Insider Tip — If you are in a hurry you can take the more expensive Hydrofoil straight from the town of Lake Como to Bellagio. It takes about 45 minutes. Check the schedule in advance on-line for departure and arrival times.
Insider Tip — The ferries run like gangbusters in the mornings, so it’s easy to catch one. But in the afternoon there are big time gaps and if you miss your ferry — like we did in Varenna — you can end up waiting an hour or more. Then again, it’s pretty darn relaxing and enjoyable to sit on a bench or stone steps by the water in any little lakeside village with accordion music drifting in the wind like bird songs.
