Travel Day – San Donato to Varenna, Lake Como

Today is a travel day, we will be traveling by car back to Florence, dropping off our rental car and swapping to train travel again. Google maps guided us to the rental car drop off point without incident. The main train station in Florence was about a 7 minute walk from the drop off point so we gave that a go again.

Look at this baby go, nearly 300km/hr

The first train was a high speed train from Florence to Milan. This baby cruises at around 300km/hr so it didn’t take us long to get to Milan. It really is deceiving as it doesn’t seem like you are traveling that fast until you run along side a freeway and see how much faster you are going than all the other cars. These trains are very comfortable you have two sets of four seats facing each other with a table between you and the aisle separating you, each seat has a power point so you can charge all your devices, which in our case is quite a few. Air conditioned and very comfortable.

Train to Milan

Next, after a 40 minute wait we boarded the slower train (a mere 115km/hr) from Milan to Vareena, lake Como. Might have been a slower train and not quite so well appointed, but the scenery as we traveled along the lake made up for any inadequacy in other areas, it was spectacular. It really is a beautiful part of Italy. I recorded a little video of a small part of the journey that you can take a look at but it really doesn’t give it any justice at all.

When we arrived we were met at the train station by our host Michela who picked us up and deposited us at our accomodation for the next three days. Then she showed us around her little town of Vereena it certainly is a lot smaller than other towns that border the lake, but suits us down to the ground as there are a lot less of those pesky tourists.

It really is a beautiful part of the world, i’ll take a few more photo’s tomorrow and show you more of the landscape.

Michaela took us to a wine bar that the locals frequent and shouted us a free wine (I never say no to a free drink). Then we went to a restaurant located literally under our bedroom window. Didn’t have far to go when it came time to retire.

Anyway it’s time for me to go to bed, we are here for three days so stay tuned.