26/08/18 – 28/08/18 – Menaggio, Lake Como
Leaving the campsite and Lake Maggiore behind, our next stop would be Lake Como, a couple of hours drive to the east. Our travelling buddies took a detour to visit lake Lugano in Switzerland but we decided on heading straight there to scout for a place for us all to stay given we were on the look out for a free site.
Our route brought us into the town of Como on the South-Western end of the lake and we followed the shoreline until we hit Menaggio around the mid point on the western side. We got to see some pretty swanky looking hotels and houses, particularly around Azanno/Tremezzo.
We eventually arrived in Menaggio around 15:00 on the Sunday afternoon – and it was completely packed – there were very few spaces in the town itself, particularly for a motorhome and more so for 2 motorhomes, so we headed a little further up the hill to an empty carpark about 15 minutes walk (downhill) from the town centre. This would be our spot for the next 2 nights. (GPSÂ 46.023499,9.226710)Â On arrival our travelling buddies said it was a bit to far for little legs to walk back up, so they spent the night much closer to the centre in a space they bagged once the crowds had left much later in the evening.
Thanks to Adele and Charlotte, they had done much of the planning before we arrived, so we knew that we wanted to do a boat trip to visit Bellagio. We also did our bit when we arrived and found out that you could do a hop-on-hop-off trip for a few more Euros (15 compared to 12) that covered the main touristy towns around the mid section of the lake.
We started the tour off by visiting Varenna, or, as we kept calling it Velaggio (We must have been confused with Menaggio + Bellagio – plus it sounded funny ;-))Â – it was about a 15 minute boat ride from Menaggio. We spent about half an hour walking around very pretty old town, then went to the beautiful botanical gardens where we completely lost track of time and ended up having to run for the last boat before lunch otherwise we would have been stuck there for 3 hours (Not a bad thing, but when you have other places to see that day it wouldn’t have been ideal) Anyway, we made it with a couple of minutes to spare and headed off to Bellagio.
Of the two towns, Bellagio was certainly the more touristy and was filled with shops and restaurants – We were all famished, I was getting Hangry so we settled on a busy cafe overlooking the lake. The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the narrow streets and shops before heading back to Menaggio feeling rather tired.
The afternoon was rounded of with a couple of beers back on our side of the lake at a place called Cafe del Pess where we had spent the previous evening. The staff were super friendly and they brought out a new set of snacks to accompany each drink ordered. We were all very happy with that 🙂
With that we said our goodbyes to Charlotte, Adele, Toby, Ella and Woody (Just in case we didn’t meet up again) and made our way back up the hill to the Moho, feeling both happy at spending a lovely day exploring and a little sad that we may be leaving our travelling buddies.
