Commo Lake and Verona

Varenna on Lake Como then to Verona

First day driving into Italy, I must say it has to be one of the worst drives yet! It was really cold and wet, we are on the med coast of Italy so there is nothing but tunnel after tunnel and we took the highway as we needed to make up some time so we were doing speeds of 120+km. The drivers don’t stay in their own lanes so it gets really frustrating and dangerous, the roads were wet from the rain and I did not enjoy it one bit and it didnt help that I was cold.

However, for the last hour of the trip we took off in the direction of Varenna, on Lake Como, that is a beautiful area, the drive is along the side of the lake which has funky colourful houses going right down to the lake, it was getting misty and dark and you could smell peoples wood fires going it was a nice homey feeling. We had to take a small ferry to the other side of the lake where we had decided to stay, had to wait for an hour so warmed up with some very yummy hot chocolate, i must say the Italians know how to make hot chocolate, boy it was cold though. Got off the ferry on the other side in a small town called Varenna, stayed at the first hotel we came to right at the ferry dock cause the owner dropped her price from $165 per night to $85 so we couldn’t say no, I think she felt sorry for us and maybe we lucked out on some end of season prices, got to park the bike right out front, it had a great big bathtub to warm up in but a very old hotel so cold however the great sheets and cozy duvet made up for it.

What a fun little town Varenna is, its one of those picture perfect little places you see at the tourist offices on the posters, it has a pretty walkway along the lake that goes into town with twinkly lights and little shops and restaurants along the way, a few art galleries and gelato shops as well. Had some great Italian pasta for dinner complete with a large helping of Tiramasu and got to sit with heated lamps right at the edge of the lake, very romantic, cheap too! Italy is definitely cheaper for food than France.

Click on this picture below as it looks even better larger!

We woke this morning to SNOW on the mountains, great, we had planned to go further north into Austria to visit some of our friends family in Innsbruck area but forget it, I already had my heated vest turned as high as it would go and Im not getting any colder than this, so we decided to head for Venice instead. It was beautiful though, just not what we expected to see on this trip, yet anyway?

Our ride to Venice was dreadful, the weather, it rained and blew up a storm too, so much so that we could feel the bike blowing around on the road and one time the back end slid sideways, a little freaky. We were on the highway with all the big trucks etc. So just taking a shit kicking with the weather, we decided to duck into a town called Verona, it was a Rick Steves suggestion anyway as being a nice place to stop so we did. We lucked out and got a great hotel right in town, they had parking right in front of the hotel in underground parking so it was perfect! Fabulous room with a very fancy breakfast, good find for sure! We walked around Verona with our brolly in hand and our long pants on and our riding boots, sexy, but we stayed dry. Totally enjoyed Verona would highly recommend it for a stop over, great shopping and restaurants and not like a big city at all.