Last weekend I had a visit from an old schoolfriend who was keen on visiting Lake Como and Bellagio. We took a different approach from my excursion a week ago and jumped on a train from Milano Cadorna to Como first. Coming out of the station you go left on the waterfront to find the fast boat to take you to Como. Unfortunately I had erroneously aimed for the 11:10 boat, but we found out it only ran on Sundays, so we had to wait until 12:25, which gave us time to explore Como first. It’s a bustling little town with an impressive church, stalls in the market place and many shops and cafes. The latter were a blessing, as it was actually very cold and grey and suitably powered up by cappuccino and hot chocolate after our sightseeing walk, we took the ferry to Bellagio.

That was a great trip and I highly recommend this approach. The ferry takes about 40 minutes and stops at various villages, one more picturesque than the other, even in grey and overcast weather. We admired the precision throwing skills of the ferry staff who would manage to get the rope loop around the hook at each location without fail the first throw. In Bellagio we walked around for some views first and then found a cosy and warm restaurant to fuel our bodies up again against the cold. Sadly this Saturday the weather really wasn’t conducive to sitting in the sun sipping a Negroni. The boat trip back to Como went fast and this time we were in the front seats (inside!) with a great view of our entire journey.

Sunday was spent sightseeing in Milano. We headed out first for some breakfast at a pastry shop in the centre (pistachio croissants, anyone?) and then headed to the Duomo to see if we could secure tickets. The queue for buying the tickets seemed to be at least 30 minutes and the queue for getting in looked even longer, so after a brief war council we decided not to proceed with the Duomo, but instead keep walking, and enjoy the sunshine outside. We walked to the Castello Sforzesco, an impressive castle in the city that features multiple museums. We ignored the museums and explored the park behind it instead, soaking up the sun.

That put us close to our lunch venue on the rooftop of the Triennale building. A bit upmarket, but with a great view over Milan from its terrace (both inside and outside). Beautiful food too and we indulged in a spinach salad with burrata and walnuts and a fine glass of wine. After that we had to walk off the burrata and walked over to the Navigli – the canals of Milan. I didn’t know there were canals here, but someone told me about them and I can confirm this is a great place to walk around, have lunch, coffee or an aperitivo. It’s a picturesque location and we whiled away a nice hour there before heading back to the apartment. And so ended another weekend.