Our Travels

October 2, 2024–

It was drizzling when we went to sleep last night, the bats outside of our B&B were flying about likely finding more insects than drier times, and all was good in the world! Today, we were expecting rain for part of the day, breaking into part sun the rest of the day. We are learning, however, and we have been told by Locals, that when we are by the mountains, never trust what the weather person might say. It might and might not turn out to be true. And so it was today! The ground was damp this morning, but the sun shone brightly. The temp was balmy and comfortable, even without a sweater. An all-around gorgeous day!

We drove to Varenna, a charming town on Lake Como a bit beyond Bellagio. The big topics for today are the following: We crashed another wedding (sort of); tight curves on the road and an impossible concrete arch; what goes down must also come back up; villas, gardens, and color, color, color; and tunnels beneath the mountain, but with several different looks inside.

First of all, going to Varenna today could not have been a better choice! The weather and the charm of the town itself (naturally, its location on Lake Como) made the colors POP! We took lots and lots of photos, but we could not capture everything of beauty that we saw; and among those that we did capture, we cannot do them justice, nor could we include them all in this blog (more on SmugMug ultimately, but not just yet).

Burt getting there was a trip once again, just because Lake Como is surrounding by scraggy tall mountains, and the roads were never built for traffic of today. They were built for walking and for donkeys. Nevertheless, trucks, cars of different sizes, bicycles, motorcycles, and whatever moves compete for space on the same road, sometimes at the same time. That makes rounding tight hairpin curves more than just a little challenging (scary), especially for us tourists from the flat Midwest of the U.S. who definitely are not used to this! A glance at our GPS gives an indication of the kinds of routes we are attempting to navigate. As we tried to get out of Varenna today, our GPS routed us to a particularly challenging route and finally toward a tight curve bordered by concrete brick walls and through a concrete Roman arch that was so small that our car could.not.fit.through! We have a Peugeot, not a Fiat, not a Smart car, not a Twingo. Recognizing the impossibility of getting through the arch, we had to figure out how to turn around with no available space, and retrace the same twirly route that brought us down there in the first place. Once again, we prayed for safety and for no other vehicles attempting to come down from the opposite way. There.was.no.more.room.on.this.road!!!! Dad did beautifully, thank God, and we definitely did thank God!

While in Varenna, we visited the Cathedral of St. George. It was originally built in the 1600s but more recently restored about fifty years ago. It was beautiful, of course, although it was nothing of the magnitude of the Duomo of Milan! Most of the towns we’ve visited have a main historic piazza, and each main piazza appears to have the major Church of that area. Photos of the Cathedral will ultimately appear on SmugMug because Dad took some good ones. In fact, there was some sort of photo shoot going on at the main altar there today. Typically, people are cautioned to stay away from walking on the main altar itself, but today there was a professional photographer, the little umbrella, and so on. Just outside of the Church was a woman, all dressed in white, (probably a bride—and likely her groom) also engaged in their own photo shoot! So far, our score is pretty high with finding weddings at Churches we’ve visited in Italy!

Getting around Varenna itself was relatively easy, unless…one wanted to go down as close as possible to the shore to have lunch at one of those romantic little restaurants with outstanding views! So, how badly does one want that food? That will determine whether or not one will brave walking down a very steep damp cobblestone path between two buildings with intermittent railings to keep one upright at all times. We chanced it, took our time, hung on to whatever we could, and we made it to the shore for a most delightful lunch. Lunch was outdoors, of course, with seating overlooking Lake Como, and we shared fried pumpkin flowers, while Dad had pasta carbonara, and I had eggplant parmigiana. We saved dessert for one of those inviting gelato places we passed when we first walked onto the piazza. So, how badly did we want the gelato? And…did we really need to get back to the parking garage so soon? Because…whatever goes down now has to come back up. We schlepped it up a steep narrow cobblestone path to street level. The gelato was awesome! The flavors were so intense! The gelato was made in house, and they do not use any artificial anything in that gelato. Dad had lemon and raspberry, and I had limoncello and something starting with an m…j…a that tasted like mango or maybe passion fruit. Delicious!

We had been told that most villas around Lake Como were closer to the shore, and our walk around that shoreline after lunch revealed some of the massive and colorful properties, even a monastery, with beautiful, lush gardens. Those villas don’t look like villas I’d imagined. Rather, they look like big houses, or even hotels, with lots of windows/rooms. Some of the villas, I think, are used as B&Bs, because we saw lock boxes higher up in town, but I’m not sure. Anyway, the potted flowers around the properties at the shoreline and even a little higher up, the giant agave plants, the old trees, the Cypress trees on some of those properties…all of those just made Varenna POP!

Because there are big, huge mountains around Lake Como, traffic (and even bicyclists—because, where else would they go?) must go through tunnels of varying lengths. On this stretch from Lecco to Varenna, however, we found interesting tunnels that looked very different from the typical that we had been seeing. Some had open spaces/sides, some had heavy boulder walls, some showed junctures/darker rings around the inner archways, making the tunnel look like a folding accordion almost. Really, really cool!

The final challenge was driving up the mountain in Lezzeno to get to our B&B, but it is getting a little bit less scary after these past few days, although one always has to be mindful of the danger of the curves and oncoming traffic in such tight spaces. Again, though, we thanked God that we’d arrived, and that we are safely back at “home.”