Lake Como - Wednesday August 29 - Sunday September 2, 2018
We woke up in Milan anxiously anticipating our journey to the Lake Como area. We have an apartment in Bellano, which is about an hour by train from Milan. First though, we have to take the shuttle from our hotel back to the airport, where we catch a train to Milan Central. From there we have to switch to a train to Bellano. Before catching the train we have to secure Jeri's suitcase. We discovered the suitcase zipper stitching was coming apart due to Jeri overstuffing her bag. DUH! Her excuse is having to pack gifts for our grandkids, 10 pounds of cosmetics and shoes, and clothes for 5 weeks. There is a very popular service in Milan airport that wraps suitcases in plastic. Blaine thought it was wise to secure her luggage so it wouldn't tear open while we were traveling on the trains.
We were met at the train station by our Airbnb host Dante. Dante's son actually owns the apartment where we are staying. It was originally owned by Dante’s wife Paolo’s mother, Luisa, and she left the apartment to her grandson when she passed away.
Dante and Paolo are Superhosts on Airbnb, and they certainly have lived up to that. Dante walked us through a half hour of instructions for the flat, as well as explaining how to get to the local bakery, pastry shop, butcher shop and his list of recommended restaurants.
After we freshened up, we took a stroll around this wonderful little town. Our apartment is ideally located, close to everything. We stopped and had lunch on the outdoor patio overlooking the lake at Cafe Arrigoni.
The next day, Thursday August 30, we woke to discover a mobile marketplace right outside our apartment. There were vendors of all kinds selling everything you can imagine. Blaine walked to the bakery and bought some fresh bread, and along the way stopped at the marketplace and bought some fresh Gialli peaches. We had a nice breakfast of bread, cheese and peaches. After breakfast we headed down to the boat dock and bought tickets to visit Varenna and Bellagio. We bought circulo tickets, which allowed us to hop on and hop off any of the boats for the whole day.
Varenna was quite a bit more crowded than Bellano, and Bellagio even more so. Bellagio is more upscale with some very expensive shops. Both towns are absolutely beautiful and well worth a visit. We do like staying in Bellano though, as it is not as busy with tourists and you get more of a local feel. Once we got back to Bellano, we had a late lunch and drinks on the patio of Chiosco del lago, which is the cafe right across the street from our apartment.
Friday morning, August 31, we woke up to wind and rain. Jeri was happy!! Even with the rain it is beautiful here. We hung out in the apartment doing laundry. It only took 3 hours to wash a load!! That doesn't include drying time, which is the old fashioned way of hanging the clothes on a rack!
Once the rain stopped we headed to King Pizzeria for a late lunch, and then of course Blaine wanted a gelato from Gelateria right next door.
After lunch we headed to the Orrido di Bellano, which is a natural gorge carved out by the Pioverna River. A concrete walkway has been attached to the sides of the gorge allowing you to admire the beauty of a truly unique place. There is an old abandoned textile manufacturing building next to the entrance of the Orrido that harnessed the power of the river to generate electricity to run the plant when it was operating. The owners of the building still own the turbines, and they sell the electricity to the power company.
After a quick stop at the market and bakery, we headed back to the apartment for some spirited games of Sequence. We tied 4 games to 4.
Saturday, Sept 1, we decided to hike from Bellano to Varenna on the Sentiero del Viandante, or the Wayfarers Path. It's an ancient mule track that dates back to the Roman times. The first part of the climb were some fairly steep stairs. We were following the directions our host Dante had given us. After about 30 minutes of following the path, we had not come across any of the markers Dante had told us to look for. Afraid that we were not going in the right direction, we decided to head back and catch the train to Varenna! We did have some awesome views of Lake Como from that height.
Once we got to Varenna we had a few drinks at a lakeside cafe. We had to kill more time than we thought because the next train back to Bellano wasn't for 4 hours. Darn, more drinks!
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One of many waterfalls at Orrindo di Bellano
This is the waterfall at the Orrindo di Bellano, where Jeri and I had our picture taken by the young Italian family. You can hear the kids in the background.
