The first thing people always say to me when I mention that I went to Lake Como is “did you see George Clooney?”. I always wish that I could answer yes, but alas, I never saw him. What I did see was a whole bunch of towns, right on the water with the most gorgeous flower boxes down every street I could find. I also got to see the most magical sunsets over the water and enjoy gelato instead of eating dinner on more than one occasion.
I also got to sit on the balcony of our Airbnb accommodation and drink wine with a view over the Piazza Grossi while Luch and I both watched as the entire town came out to socialize and watch the sunset every night. It was like living in a small town and I absolutely loved the feeling. It was the first time in our entire trip where we felt like we were part of the town of Bellano and that we weren’t just tourists passing through.
Our accommodation was a pretty tiny apartment very close to the water and the ferries that travelled to all the other towns in Lake Como which definitely suited us perfectly. We arrived by train and were just preparing to walk to our accommodation, which by this point in our journey had become our norm, when we were approached by an older Italian man who couldn’t really speak English. He said “Jennifer?” and showed me a picture of me from Airbnb. I quickly conferred with Luch and said he must be our host coming to collect us. It actually turned out to be the hosts dad, who although he couldn’t speak any English was incredibly friendly and smiling all the way back to the apartment.
Ever since that day I realised that when people say that it is a language barrier that makes people rude, they are highly mistaken, because you don’t need to speak the same language to be friendly and smile at someone. We found this a lot in Italy, especially in the much smaller towns.
Again, like in Cinque Terre, I had just assumed that Como was the place to visit in the Lake Como area, but when we were researching accommodation, I actually ended up falling in love with the smaller towns that were nowhere near Como. In fact, we didn’t even end up visiting Como, but Bellano, Menaggio, Bellagio, Varenna and Fiumelatte were amazing.
We decided to spend our days taking the ferry between a few of the towns and seeing what they had to offer. Seeing as how we were staying in Bellano, we left exploring it until the day before we left and instead decided to visit as many towns as we could in a day and a half.
Menaggio was first up and although it started to rain just as we got there, we still found it quite beautiful and filled with colourful buildings, trees, water features and flowers around every corner. It was also incredibly festive with bunting hanging from some of the poles around the main piazza.
Bellagio was next on our list and the busiest town that we found when it came to tourists and locals alike. We think it might have been all the interesting shops that held there attention, but we just loved all the old staircases that led to small alleyways and up into the Old Town with its beautiful buildings. The flower lined streets right on the water were like being in a fairytale movie. I almost expected a bird or squirrel to run out of one of the trees and crowd around me while I sang to them.
Varenna was a quick add on for us and by the time we arrived, we were already starting to feel tired from all the walking around the other towns. We found it far less busy than Bellagio, which was a nice relief and we spent most of our time walking on the waterfront promenade and stopping to take photos of flowers along the way. We also stopped to get some amazing, but super expensive gelato. It was worth it. It was always worth it! 🙂
We had seen all these signs for a castle in Varenna, so we decided to walk to it. It only took us 20 minutes before we realised that we would have to climb for at least another 30 minutes to get to it and gave up. Instead, we just decided to walk up the road to the Villa Monastero. Although we didn’t go in, we took a ton of photos from the road and it reminded me of an old temple with all these huge sculptures covering the gardens.
We carried on walking down the road and after about another 10 minutes, we found ourselves in another town. We hadn’t really meant to walk to an entirely different town, but now that we were in Fiumelatte, we decided to look up the train station on our Google maps and head towards it. We were too exhausted to walk back to Varenna and at least we knew the train would be free because we still had our two month passes.
On our way to the train station, we found the Fiumelatte’s namesake. A river that runs for 250 metres straight into Lake Como. We took a few photos and just enjoyed the cool air that carried the spray from the waterfall straight into our faces before climbing the many stairs (yet again) up to the train station.
The next day was spent exploring the tiny town of Bellano that we had called our home for 3 nights. We had no idea that it had a 15 million year old gorge and waterfall called the Orrido di Bellano which was one of its main sights. We had to visit there and although we visited in the afternoon, we were told to come back for free in the evening and see the waterfall lit up at night.
Besides the gorge, there were some beautiful churches like the Chiesa di SS. Rocco e Sebastiano and the Parrocchia di Bellano and we also found ourselves walking down the waterfront promenade and sitting on benches along the way to soak up as much of Italy as we possibly could before moving on to Switzerland.
People often ask me after seeing so many towns and cities which one was my favourite and I really can’t answer that. Every place held a different vibe and we had so many adventures along the way that I can’t really pick out one as my absolute favourite. What I can say is that I thought that Lake Como had the most beautiful sunsets. The sunsets and the flowers that is. I couldn’t get enough of their flowers! 🙂
