Day 14 – Lake Como

Varenna, where we stayed at Eremo Gaudio, is on Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy. The lake is massive and is fed by melting glaciers, rain and springs from the mountains that surround it.

There are also some famous towns all around the Lake such as Bellagio and Menaggio, among other beautiful, lesser known and less touristy places such as Bellano or Tremezzo. There is a fantastic ferry service between the towns and E10 buys an all day hop on hop off ticket, which we used to maximum effect!

Our first stop was Bellagio (used in filming for Star Wars Episode 2 and Casino Royale) which was very pretty, but seriously over priced! It is not unusual apparently to see a celebrity around there, which is also why everything is so much more expensive!

Next we went to Villa Carlotta, an absolutely stunning Villa near the town of Tremezzo which we later walked to. Villa Carlotta and the gardens are beautiful but at the entry fee required, would need more time than we had to give so we walked on. There was an amazingly beautiful hotel called Grand Hotel Tremezzo, where a small coke cost E5 and a cheese burger E23! We didn’t bother trying to find out room prices!

Martin and I paid a little extra for an additional ticket to take us to Bellano, which is off the major tourist track. We walked to the Orrido, a ravine carved through the mountain over centuries where normally a calm river of aquamarine water flows through town in to Lake Como.

Due to all the rain, however the water was thundering through its stone tracks, being fed in to from multiple sources, slamming against rock as it plummeted and swirled it’s way towards the large opening that leads it quickly but finally peacefully in to the lake.

It was a perfect mixture of tranquality and ferocity that only nature can provide.

Exceedingly pleased that we had made the effort to go out of our way, we returned to the ferry and went on to Menaggio, another pretty town, but not as attractive as it’s more famous sister. As most of town was, by now and by virtue of it being Monday, closed we just had a quick stroll through, discovered a beautiful church called St.Martha, plain on the outside but rich and ornate on the inside and shared a Tiramisu and Bacio gellato while waiting for the last ferry ride which took us back to Varenna.

Once there we enjoyed the sunset from the deck of our hotel, before going for a quick dinner at a fabulous restaurant Martin and I had discovered yesterday, and heading hurriedly for the train station. Our hurry was in vane though as our train was cancelled and we found ourselves hanging around Varenna station in the dark and cold for an hour before finally being able to go to Milan for our overnight train to Rome.