We opted to rent a car and drive to Lake Como rather than take our chances with the train again.   It was a beautiful drive and we mostly were able to get here directly, with a few changes along the way due to lack of familiarity with Italian road signs. It was all good though, because we weren’t in a hurry and like I said, it was incredibly beautiful. 

Since we’ve been here, we’ve taken advantage of the water ferry to travel between our homebase of Menaggio and Varenna and Belaggio. The views everywhere around us are amazing. Here’s our view from breakfast. 

After breakfast we took the ferry to Varenna and hiked up a steep windy path (with lots of steps again!) to a castle (Castelo di Vezio).

There was even a “dungeon.”

We made it out of the dungeon

hiked back down to Varenna, 

and caught the ferry to Bellagio before heading back to Menaggio for the day.