Lake Como 🇮🇹

I’m reasonably sure that the guy who wrote the song about the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer was inspired by a trip to Lake Como. We rolled into Como Town yesterday and nearly melted when we got off the train. Not only was the heat searing, there was such a haze that’s the famous beautiful views this place is known for were simply not to be had.

Our first order of business was to find our hotel, which GPS told us would be a thirteen minute walk from the train station. We took GPS at its word and dragged our bags for thirteen minute over somewhat irregular terrain to a point where our hotel did not appear to be. “It’s supposed to be unit #9,” said Debbie, who is my liaison with the technology of GPS. We found a #9 and it looked decidedly like a men’s wear store so we had to recalculate. We discovered that it does not offend Italian sensibilities to have two #9s within a 100 square foot circumference, and so we found ourselves staring at a door that appeared to be attached to nothing at all but with a mat in the doorway which said “You are here” (which we kind of already knew).

Finding the door was one success, but the real question was how to get to the other side of it. I found what looked like an intercom and pressed a button on it. Chimes rang and I pulled on the door and it did not open. I repeated the process, and once again I pulled on the door and it did not open. I tried a third time, at the same time complaining to the wall in front of me that we couldn’t get in. In a moment of inspiration, I pushed on the door, and as if by magic, it opened. We found ourselves in a funky neon-lit corridor in a 500 year old stone building but with no sign of human life. We were still unsure how to proceed, but the elevator at the end of the corridor looked promising. We climbed aboard and were thrilled to find that one of the buttons was labeled “Reception”. Excellent! It felt like we were doing an escape room in reverse, and we were winning. Our glass elevator rose two stories until we found ourselves looking eye to eye with a fellow behind a desk immediately opposite us. It seemed a bit like that moment when Dorothy and her entourage first encountered the Great and All-Powerful Oz in the Emerald City, except that he was a bespectacled preppy-looking guy with the unlikely name of “Pedro”.

Pedro was great. He provided us lots of local intel and showed us to our very hi- tech room, which was located about ten feet to his right. Unfortunately, like Oz, Pedro had no ability to grant me a new brain, so getting the most out of our technology was challenging. We got the air conditioning working only by calling him back to set it for us after he had already shown us how. Later we tried to use the shower, which is a very large marble-encased pod that was a room unto itself, across the bedroom from the sink and toilet. By this time, Pedro was off-shift so we had to figure this out on our own. There were six dials on the wall to choose from plus a control for the LED mood lights. It took a while to produce water and even longer to produce hot water, but eventually both things happened. It might have been deemed a total success if the drain had actually worked.

A valuable piece of advice from Pedro was to get up early the next morning to be in line for ferry tickets by 7:00 AM. We did so, and there were only about 30 people ahead of us when we got there so we easily got the day passes we wanted to travel north to Bellagio, Menaggio and Varenna. We opted for the slow ferry that made many stops, because we wanted to take in as much scenery as possible, haze permitting. This proved to be savvy move because an announcement was made just before the fast ferry was to leave saying that their 8:40 sailing was cancelled due to technical problems. Imagine that! A ferry cancelled because of technical issues! Our ferry left without a hitch and Debbie was compelled to come up with an analogy about the story of the tortoise and the hare. We weren’t very far up the lake when we passed a fast ferry dead in the water

The trip up the lake involved about 15 stops, zigzagging back and forth and taking about 2 hours and 20 minutes. We could never see the opposite shore due to the haze. We spent a some time in Bellagio, a very short in Varenna, and looked at Menaggio from the deck of the ferry. These places are all beautiful (and steep), and I’ll let the attached pictures provide you a description of them as I have prattled far too long about shower drains and such like.

I’ll close by saying that the return trip had fewer stops and took 2 hours. The haze lifted and we were able to enjoy the lake scenery and identify the lakeside residences of Richard Branson and George Clooney. We got back, and by nightfall the sky was beautiful and the temperature reduced to a balmy 29C at 10 pm. Como Town’s nightlife was buzzing…. and the hotel staff had poured some Drano down our shower, so life is good.