day 4 – giorno quattro
This morning Mom just had to set the alarm for 6:45 am even though we didn’t get to bed until almost midnight last night. We didn’t have a precise schedule this morning except that we wanted to make the 10:20 am train to Varenna from Milan. It was good that we’d gotten 90% packed up last night because this morning I was tired and didn’t even want to get out of bed. We left our apartment around 8:30-9 and headed back to the Cadorna station that we originally arrived at, except we took a different route that wasn’t familiar. But we made it just fine onto the right metro and made sure we had our 4€ ready before we got to the ticket (biglietto) machine. Our plan was to take the metro from Porta Genova to Milano Centrale and then catch a train from there to Varenna. We had been warned many many times of the expert pick pockets in Italian cities and crowded train stations but there were far fewer people there than I expected. The place was a maze though. We got off the metro at I don’t know what floor, took at least two, maybe three, escalators and two sets of stairs before we got to the actual train station level. And oh my goodness. I’ve never seen anything like it. It had to have had close to 30 platforms and a huge glass domed ceiling over all of it. Quite an impressive engineering feat.
We got to our platform around 10 am and surprisingly? the train was already there, so we got on and found a couple seats together, facing backwards but ehhh.
The views out the window leaving Milan were definitely of the rough side of the city. Many rundown, graffiti-covered, grown-over buildings. But the views improved throughout the hour long trip. Not too long after leaving the city, we started getting glimpses of much more attractive hill towns, still somewhat run down. Eventually we started seeing bits of Lake Como and quicker that I’d expected, we arrived at the Varenna train station. We disembarked and I totally had one of those “I feel like I’m in one of those BBC TV shows I watch” moment.
The station was picturesque and as we followed the directions down the hill towards our hotel (and the lake) I increasing felt that this was going to be a very enjoyable place. MUCH slower paced than Milano, thank goodness.
Tiny streets call for tiny cars and lots of people call for lots of patience! There was a sidewalk most of the way to the hotel, but when there wasn’t, people just walk in the street and cars are generally cautious around them.
We arrived at Hotel Royal Victoria (🤯) before our room was ready, so we took our time and wandered around our adorable part of Varenna. There’s really only the one road big enough for cars that passes through town. All the rest are 6-8′ wide rock pathways and stairs that couldn’t be more idyllic. Almost all the buildings here are soft shades of pink, yellow, blue, and cream. It’s beautiful. However, my calves were complaining about the stairs by the time we headed back to the hotel to check into our room. They’ve got an interesting way of building stairs in pathways here… the steps aren’t level. The whole step itself is inclined, maybe halfway between level and the natural incline. I don’t mind it so much going down, but going up it’s much more work for the calves vs flat steps being more for the thighs.
We got ourselves situated in our room – facing the singular road in town and directly across from the large church and bell tower… we’ll get back to that, and then still had an hour or so to explore before our tour group was to meet up and introduce ourselves. The hotel a couple doors down has an extensive botanical garden on the grounds and since the hotels were related we took advantage of a free voucher to enjoy the gardens. Have I already said picturesque too many times? I think Mom and I hit our quota today. Get us county bumpkins in a beautifully landscaped garden with rock walls and pathways, iron gates and climbing roses… Mwah! Loved it. We loved it so much we were almost late to meet with the group!
We met out on the outdoor patio space of our hotel and gathered with wine and snacks to introduce ourselves and go over bits about the tour. Our guide is Sarah Shortreed, a very fun English woman. There are 27 people in our group and let’s just say my age is a minority. With a population of 1. But I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone in the group. There’s a couple from Bellingham and from Bonney Lake, and then they get further away, CA, AZ, VA, NY… I’m sure I’m missing some states. An important piece of our meeting was to choose a buddy, someone we’d be responsible for (and vise versa) during buddy checks. Rather than Sarah having to account for all 27 of us, she would say “buddy check” and we’d all find our buddies.
It’s almost weird to hear American English again after only a couple days of Italian immersion. It sounds so harsh sometimes. Being that we are so close to Switzerland and Lake Como is a holiday destination, we heard French, American English, English English, and German almost as much as Italian!
After our brief introductions, Sarah walked us down to point out where the people ferry would dock so we could visit some of the other towns on the lake. An all day boat pass is included for tomorrow so we are free to roam on our own. There’s some very tempting hikes around the lake, but apparently seeing some fancy villas with extensive gardens is the thing to do here.
After our short walk, we all filtered into various restaurants for dinner; the one Sarah recommended filled up very quickly. We ended up at another, just across from our hotel. Tara, another tour member, joined us and Sarah showed up a few minutes later and joined our party. I presume that everything on the menu is bound to be delicious anywhere… Mom ordered my first choice, penne with smoked salmon, so I got lasagna. Gotta be honest, our lasagna at home takes the cake. However, I totally would have stolen Mom’s dish if she’d let me, it was So Yummy.
After dinner we were all fading fast so we said goodnight and drifted off to our rooms. It was warm when we got up to our room so we had the window open for a while, long enough to hear the church bells toll across the street. Uh oh. We closed the window so we’ll see how this plays out tonight!
Life Is Short, Just Do It 
Leave a comment