Thursday and Friday, August 29-30, 2024

How to explain getting from here to there without boring backstory? Our plan was to leave Lugano, Switzerland this morning and take a bus to Menaggio, a town on Lake Como in Italy. We ate breakfast at our hotel and left about 8 am, taking the aforementioned funicular back up to the train station. From there we found the bus stop, but the driver told us we had to have an online ticket and couldn’t pay in cash! Disappointed because Jim had tried to buy the ticket online without success, our plan B was to walk with all our luggage to another stop a few miles away, no easy feat. We finally made it, sweating heavily. Another bus, a different driver–he would allow us to pay at the station in Menaggio, just as the first driver should have done. We were soon on our way down the rather hazardous road along Lake Lugano to Menaggio, the driver honking before curves in case oncoming traffic didn’t see him approaching.

At Menaggio, a town on Lake Como in Italy, we paid for our bus tickets and then walked at least a mile, dragging luggage along cobblestone streets, to the ferry which would take us to our “final” destination of Varenna across the lake. Before we boarded the ferry, I ducked into a small bar and bought some Coke Zero for both of us. There, that was better. In a short while we crossed Lake Como and docked at Varenna. Another short walk up a cobblestone hill to our hotel. We rested a bit in our room before venturing out to explore Varenna. There were throngs of people doing the same.

The spectacular scenery along blue, inviting Lake Como, reflections of the surrounding mountains on its placid surface, has a cooling effect in the late summer swelter. We walked the street along the Lake, passing restaurants and gelato shops. We climbed up into town and found a church and some more restaurants–we were famished and sat down to eat at one where we could get a seat. There were crowds of hungry people. My lunch was described as a sort of “toast,” or grilled sandwich of ham and cheese. I discovered Lemon Soda, which I drank for the rest of our time in Italy.

After a walk back and more resting in our room, we ventured back out to eat dinner at a place adjacent to where we ate lunch. Nothing spectacular, just pizza. There weren’t a lot of choices besides pizza and pasta, occasionally some lake fish. Also not a whole lot to do in Varenna.

The next morning we took the ferry to Bellagio, another small town a short boat ride away from Varenna. They say if Bellagio is the diamond of Lake Como, Varenna is the pearl. To me they were much the same. Bellagio may have had more shops with expensive clothing, jewelry, and some art. I wasn’t interested in shopping because I knew I couldn’t fit anything in my luggage to take home. I hadn’t even packed a swimsuit. Jim stopped for some lunch at a takeout place, but since our hotel provided breakfast every day, I wasn’t hungry. Just always thirsty. The heat was intense and I wished I had packed my bathing suit because I wanted to jump in the lake to cool off.

Back in Varenna, it probably wasn’t the best idea that we decided to hike up the mountain to the castle in the hazy heat of late afternoon, but that was the (Jim’s) plan, and I didn’t question him for fear of being labelled a sissy. It’s possible to take a few different trails up to the Castle, and apparently we chose the most difficult, though supposedly shorter path. The fact that there wasn’t another soul before or following us on the trail should have been some indication that we were on the wrong, or least preferable, one!

All began well as we climbed some streets to a meadow from which we could see the Lake and town below. But that meadow led to woods where steep and dangerous stone stairs seemed to climb upwards without end! Stones strewn unevenly here and there, it was a wonder one of us didn’t sprain an ankle. I kept hoping the path would level out, but before it did, both of us were sweating buckets. I also kept thinking maybe we should turn around because things weren’t getting any easier. Just then we seemed to arrive at the top of this path. We passed signs pointing to the Castle and made our way to the little town surrounding it to find something to drink. After much needed refreshment, we went back to the Castle entrance and went in.

Once part of a chain of medieval watchtowers, the Castillo di Vezio features a wooden drawbridge. Views from the top are magnificent. And we’d had our workout for the day! Going down? We found the path we might have taken up. It wasn’t much easier, and it was slippery, an ancient but much wider mule trail of cobblestones. Like when we were ascending, I kept hoping this path downwards would end because it was steep and treacherous in its own way, my momentum always propelling me forward so that I thought at one point I might just roll the rest of the way down!