Girl's just wanna have fun(icular) Varenna - Como

The weather today was a slight variation on the perfection we have been experiencing of late, dear reader. The breeze, that arrived later yesterday, brought with it cloud and cooler temperatures, although the puffer jackets I saw in the morning were overkill.

I showered and dressed quickly and made my way straight to the ticket office at the ferry terminal to avoid the queues. Some days are quieter than others but it is difficult to pick the ebb and flow of the tour groups that they can so easily make life difficult because of their sheer number.

At 7:30am, there were few people about and I was the only person at the ticket office. After a short wait while the attendants finished their discussion, I was served. Two round trip tickets to Como on the fast ferry please. "You can only buy one way." came the reply. OK, but the fast ferry leaves at 8:40 I enquired? "No, that is holiday only". And Sundays as it turns out, but any information is dispensed sparingly. "The next fast ferry is 1:16pm." Of course it is, I thought. So the next 'slow' ferry to Como is the 11:07am? "Si". Alora, I purchased two one way tickets to Como and returned to tell Jayne the good news. There was no rush. We had time to waste.

The fast ferry takes about an hour from Varenna to Como, but the slow version is around 2 hours 30 minutes. It zig zags across the lake and is a passenger ferry only, no cars. The cloud and the haze that came with it meant it was not going to be a great day for photography and I would have preferred arriving at Como in the morning rather than mid-afternoon. The only other option was to catch a ferry to Bellagio and then go on to Como but I wasn't confident enough in the timetable to make that journey.

But I'm going to Como.

At the pier there were designated lines for Bellagio and Menaggio, but nothing for Como. Time to ask again. Either line was OK and the Como ferry was almost there. Quite a number of people disembarked and we quickly assumed our places on the back deck. Menaggio is directly across the Lake where a few more people went ashore. At Bellagio the ferry became a veritable ghost town and we secured rail side seats and braved the windy conditions until we arrived at Como.

A bridge at Nesso.

Villa del Balbianello.

Tremezzo, I think.

A villa.

Jayne's list included the funicular, hence today's very bad pun on the Cyndi Lauper classic, Girls just wanna have fun from 1983. The ferry docked at Pier 1 right opposite the funicular to Brunate. The line was already long as a tour group of around 50 people had just arrived. There was no way I was joining that line and decided that buying our ticket home was more important. Once we learned where the ticket office was.

The rail line for the funicular.

Around to Pier 3 where we had a good view of the sculpture, Life Electric, an homage to Alessandro Volta the inventor of the electric battery, not the vacuum cleaner. The person at the ferry information kiosk informed us that our return option, fast ferry style was a choice of 6:40pm or 6:40pm and we should buy the tickets while some were still available. It was settled, we would take the 6:40pm and it departed from  Pier 3. Tickets purchased, we set off for, wait for it, a church or cathedral, the thing with the duomo.

The sculpture.

Through the main piazza, past many restaurants, we stumbled across the biggest McDonald's store I've ever seen. Tables lined the street and there were precious few that were vacant. Every second shopfront was a restaurant and people queued for that swill. Disappointing in a country renowned for its cuisine.

Bigger than Texas.

The Basilica Cathedral Como, in the Piazza del Duomo, crowded by the other buildings and its sheer size made it difficult to obtain a clear photo of the façade. Inside was the usual array of soaring decorated ceilings, lavish side altars, a rose window and unusually, a number of tapestries depicting biblical scenes.

The ceiling.

The rose window.

A side altar.

One of the many tapestries.

You can never have too many Basilicas, right? So there was one just around the corner, the Basilica di San Fedele. It wasn't open to tourist traffic so there was no tick on my Basilica Bingo card.

San Fedele.

It was now time to return to the funicular and ride the rails to Brunate. The queue was significantly smaller and we happily, well, not unhappily, joined the line. we were soon followed by a group of Americans, one of whom remarked immediately that she wasn't queueing for this. I pointed out that the line had snaked around the corner less than an hour ago and the wait wouldn't be that long. It turned out that with ticket purchase we waited for two funicular trips before we found our way into a carriage. And so continues our quest to travel on every funicular we come across. So far I have missed two rides, due to maintenance work, one in Zagreb, the other Monserrat.

As I wrote earlier, the weather was not conducive to photography so I only have a couple of photos from Brunate. As we were on a timeline and there were still items to complete down in Como, the return walk to the lighthouse was out of consideration. What to do then? Birra, of course.

The ashtray was not for us.

Down to the bar where a table with a view was available and we enjoyed a couple of local pilseners while people watching. We also kept an eye on the queue for the funicular from "the balcony of the alps" back down to earth.

No idea, but it looks important.

It's a tight fit.

The home of Como 1907 .

By the time we reached Como, it was clear that our walk to Villa Olmo and its gardens was not going to be possible. We instead decided to have a late lunch/early dinner here and went off in search of a restaurant away from the extra busy piazzas, hopeful the food would be more authentic and crowds and prices reduced. Yeah nah. Still busy, still expensive and my cacio e pepe was lacking the pepe bit. I feel they tone it down for the bland tourist palette. Jayne did enjoy her carbonara. The cheapest wine was €40 a bottle and there was no house wine. Disappointing.

Interestingly, we observed the server, like one in Firenze, head off across the piazza to obtain a bottle of wine for someone to drink with their meal. Is it a storage issue on their premises or do they just popped over to the wine shop when someone orders something out of the main?

The statue of Alessandro Volta.

Post dinner, we strolled down to Pier 3 and joined the line to board the fast ferry for the ride back to Varenna and serenity.

Alla prossima.