Category: Italy/Slovenia/Austria/Liechtenstein/Switzerland, Fall 2021

The drive from Vaduz, Liechtenstein to Lake Como was supposed to be 2.75 hours.  It ended up being more like 3.5 hours, mostly due to traffic, but also due to complete white-out weather over a mountain pass, where traffic slowed to a complete crawl.  We entered a tunnel in full sun, and 5km later it was zero sun ($3.5 trillion sun, to be exact).

That crawl turned into bumper to bumper barely moving traffic at the border into Italy, right on the edge of Lake Como.  Man do I miss bumper to bumper traffic!!

I don’t know if it was because we were travelling on a Saturday or if it’s like this all the time, but the border crossing from Switzerland just outside Como was awful, and there was no reason for it other than they took several lanes of traffic and diverted it into one….but there was NOBODY at the border monitoring anything.  Is this where the US is getting their border advice?

We turned in our rental car at the train station in Como, and walked to the ferry dock.  I’ve gotta say, the city of Como itself is shady and ugly, at least until you hit the waterfront.  The area from the train station to the waterfront is a shithole, with several homeless folks and one example of public urination right in front of us.  That took care of any plans to visit this spot during our stay.  Definitely DO NOT stay here!

We caught a ferry just as it was about to leave.  Keep in mind that you can buy your ticket on board the ferries.  It will cost you an extra euro, but if you are about to miss a ferry because of a line at the dock then this is a good option.  Below is one of the many ferry docks around the lake.

Beautiful villas and churches are everywhere!

Here is Bellagio, our home for the next 4 days, from the ferry.

We are staying right above the ferry dock, at the Hotel Du Lac.  Here is the view from our balcony.

If you choose to stay here, book well in advance, particularly if you want one of the 4 rooms that have an actual balcony facing the water.  That’s the ferry dock below, you can’t get any closer.

Bellagio is a cute little town to walk around in, with a lot of narrow streets curving up the hills.  I highly recommend this as your home base for visiting the other parts of the lake.

We visited the little village of Varenna on our first day,  and it’s a very quiet and beautiful spot, with several botanical gardens along the water.  Below is our approach to the ferry dock.

The walk to the gardens is along the waterfront.

The below photos are from the two botanical gardens of Villa Cipressi and Villa Monastero.

This is such an excellent spot for taking photos!

The next day we visited Menaggio and walked along the waterfront, but there was construction going on and it wasn’t the most pleasant walk.  We had planned to take the ferry all the way north to Colico, but the ferry I targeted only runs on Sundays and Holidays.  Check the schedule closely!  We ended up visiting Nesso instead, which has a beautiful waterfall, and nothing else.  We barely saw it from the ferry on our first day, and wanted to check it out.

Here is a better look.

We hiked up above it, and there were a few other waterfalls to see, but no better view of the main falls.

The little bridge you can view the falls from is very photogenic.  No sign of Instagrammers, but I’m sure they are around!

You can see this little bridge from the top looking down.

My suggestion is be prepared to take a picture of the waterfall from the ferry as you approach Nesso from Como…it’s barely worth the special stop, as the place is really run down, and rather depressing to see.  Great waterfall though!

The most famous hotel in Bellagio is the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni.  We had dinner at one of their restaurants, La Goletta, and it was excellent.  They have a beautiful spot right on the lake.

I had to take a picture of this Major Douche in the restaurant.  Somebody is overcompensating for something!

Speaking of Major Douches, here is Gavin Newsom working in a restaurant near our hotel!  Nice shirt Gavin!

During sunset we started chatting with our balcony neighbors, Cam and Caroline.

Cam and Caroline are both American teachers in Madrid.  Very cool couple!

Later that night, after dinner, we saw this church all lit up in red.

This is Columbus Day in the US.  Cooincidence?  Later that night we chatted (and shared wine with) Cam and Caroline for about two hours.  Thanks for sharing the Barbera D’Alba Cam!

During this chat I saw that numerous other churches around the lake were lit up in red.  WTF?  Hopefully we can figure it out.  Cam is a history teacher…I’m counting on him to get the info!

Next up, we visit Villa del Balbianello, which needs it’s own post.

We are very close to a beautiful lake in Switzerland, Walensee, so we drove the half hour there to take a ferry and hike up to a beautiful waterfall.  The drive took us to the small village of Weesen, where the ferry starts from.

Quick note, Switzerland doesn’t use Euros, and the parking lot only accepted Swiss Francs, no credit cards.  I had to run across the street to the restaurant there to get change.  Keep this in mind so you don’t miss the ferry.  There are only 3 of them a day, so if you miss it, you are SOL.  Fortunately we made the ferry.

While onboard we sat next to Dr Eberhard Paul and his grandson Jan (pronounced Yan).

Jan is 10 years old, and is currently in his first year of English in school, so he was anxious to practice.  I was surprised with how well he could not only communicate with us, but how much of what we said he understood, with a little help from his grandfather.  Jan lives here next to the lake, which has got to be a really rough place to grow up!  Super inquisitive kid, with no fear of talking to strangers from another country.  He’s going to go far!  If you ever make it to Northern California, look us up!

We only took the ferry to one stop, Betlis, where there is practically nothing, with the exception of cows wearing bells.  There goes the ferry, with the flag of the Red Cross on the stern.  Switzerland is a strange place.

This sign points toward the wasserfalle.

A group of cute little goats along the way.

The waterfall is not flowing very heavy right now, but it was still woth the short hike up.

We walked by a small vineyard, and I’ve never seen grape protection like this before.  Every single cluster was covered in a net.

We had planned to have lunch at a small restaurant near the waterfall, but they said we needed a reservation.  Hard to believe, as the place was half full, but so be it.  We ended up walking back to Weesen, which only took about an hour, and was a beautiful walk.

It involved walking through several tunnels, but at least they weren’t 9 miles long like in Austria!

The restaurant right across from the parking lot for the ferry is pretty good, so I’d count on that place if you ever visit the lake.  They even take credit cards, which is great, since I don’t need a whole bunch of Swiss Francs since we are heading to Italy the next day.  One last beautiful shot of Walensee Lake.

As we were driving back towards Liechtenstein, we saw a gondola going over the road and up the hill.  I quickly pulled over and checked it out, and it was just a short drive to Unterterzen, where the gondola departed from.

Here is a shot of the roadway where we saw the gondola…from the gondola.

This was an expensive gondola ride, at 42 Swiss Francs each (about $45), but we found out it was worth it after finding out how far up the mountain it really went.  The first ride was about a half hour, and had the steepest section I’ve ever seen on a gondola.  The picture doesn’t do it justice!  At one point it was near vertical!

The second section was another 25 minutes.  There are ski lifts everywhere you look.  This place would be amazing in winter!  You can still see a little snow on the ground from the prior night in the bottom of the photo.

Looking back down the hill.  The clouds started rolling in about 15 minutes after we got to the top.

This is the view from the restaurant at the top.  Such a gorgeous place!

The light was just right on the gondola ride back down.  I took 5 photos and had a REALLY hard time picking what I thought was the best one!  This is looking WNW toward Weesen.

Up next, Lake Como!