Exploring Lake Como

1^st July 2011

After breakfast at our hotel, we headed off to the ferry wharf at Cadenabbia to buy a day excursion ticket that will allow us unlimited travel between the ports in the mid lake area. The price had gone up top 12 Euro per person, but is pretty good value. It allows us to travel to Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio, S. Giovanni, Tremezzo and Cadenabbia.

The lake ferry routes

Before we left Carole put our laundry in to be done by the hotel. They do it on site and dry it in the sun for a modest 5 Euro per load.

Looking back towards our Hotel in Griante

Our first destination was Bellagio, only around 10 to 15 minutes across the lake. We walked around Bellagio for an hour or so. The foreshore is lined with expensive hotels and numerous restaurants, some shops ( but less than we expected) and narrow cobbled streets climbing up the hillside also lined with shops and restaurants. After all we had read about it being the playground of the rich and famous, we found it a bit disappointing.

Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni Bellagio

Small vessel port in Bellagio

Side streets of Bellagio

The Gardens of Villa  Melzi (a short walk from Bellagio Village)

Next stop was Varenna, which in our view has much more charm. Very few shops, but a very pretty town and plenty of eating options. We had a very pleasant lunch at Hotel du Lac, on an elevated, shaded balcony looking out over the lake, a bit off the beaten track.  Like everywhere else there are restaurants right on the water packed with tourists, generally in close proximity to the ferry wharf.

Waterfront in Varenna

Lunch at Hotel du Lac

From Varenna we went to Menaggio, the larger of the towns so far. It was just after lunch, so a good deal of the shops (not that there are many) had closed for a siesta (still a good old custom, at least in this area). The place was pretty dead for the high tourist season but pleasant enough to walk around. It also had a little harbor full of sailing boats.

Approaching Menaggio

Yacht harbour Menaggio

Up till now we had caught the car ferry to each of our destinations, and thought we would try the smaller mid lake shuttle to get us home. It took us from Menaggio to Varenna to Bellagio to S. Giovanni and finally the Villa Carlotta wharf at Tremezzo. We walked about 1 km back to our hotel along the waterfront.

S Giovanni

At every village there is a good deal of walking on cobbled streets to see the town, and in most cases the town centre is located well up the hillside from the shore. So we had plenty of exercise and were lucky to once again have fine weather.

After a few hours rest, we decided to get the most out of our ferry pass and go back over to Bellagio for dinner 9maybe it was more impressive at night !). We found a nice restaurant in a side stree
t at around 8.30pm, still not much activity in the streets, most shops are closed, but the restaurants (at least the ones away from the waterfront) are getting busy. We had an excellent meal and headed back to Cadenabbia on the 2150hrs ferry. Bellagio was still pretty quiet, a few shops had reopened, but generally there was not the level of activity you would expect in high tourist season.

Bellagio by night

By now the wind had come up and there was a reasonable swell on the lake. We sat on the lee side of the ferry and could still feel a bit of spray. When we arrived back at our hotel, everyone was dining inside, it was obviously too windy to eat on the lakeside.