Traveling in Italy -- Our Way                                                             May 12, 2000

We arrived in Italy clueless and planless.  What’s new?  Our nomadic life really is just a mix of haphazard wanderings.  Our first few days in Italy provide an example of how we travel.

We landed at Malpensa, Milan's (loosely -- it's nearly an hour away) international airport, and as usual we didn't have hotel reservations.  Booking a hotel is often easy; there’s a reservation center at the airport or train station or downtown.  Here helpful employees secure rooms, provide written materials and maps, and will give you a rundown of the sights.  Sometimes there are even same-night hotel bargains to be had.  But not at Malpensa.  The information booths, of which there were at least two, were vacant and bare.  After searching and a little luck, we did find some  pamphlets about the area, but no reservation service.  A man selling bus tickets into town told us Milan was booked solid, no rooms available.  So we decided to go elsewhere.  But where?  We bought a guidebook that suggested the Lombardy region, Italy’s lake country, would be interesting.  And the first large town in that direction, Varese, was even closer to the airport than Milan.  Therefore, instead of boarding a train or bus to Milan, we rented a car.

It had been a long travel day, so we stopped at the first nice hotel we saw -- the Palace Grand Hotel Varese.  It’s a 4-star hotel -- in Italy ratings are typically posted at the hotel entrance -- and is situated atop a private hill (seven switchbacks to the top) overlooking Lake/Lago Varese.  The hotel was a lovely old building but rooms were pricey at $235.  Still, the view out the window was lovely (see photo), the huge bathroom featured huge fluffy white terrycloth bathrobes, one of my favorites, and, best of all, we didn't have to go any further.

It was now 6:00 (or rather, 18:00) and we were hungry.  The hotel didn’t start serving dinner until 7:30.  Obviously Italians lead a different life from folks in say, Miami, who flock to early-bird dinner specials at 5:00.  So, off to the town center to walk a bit and find a place to eat that met our usual criteria: Is the place popular? And, does it have a little ambience?  After an hour  wandering through the narrow streets of central Varese, checking out the many upscale shops, gelaterias, Italian bakeries and menus outside closed restaurants, we still hadn't found a place to eat.  Now for Plan B.  We spotted and trailed three hungry-looking businessmen leaving a 4-star hotel.  Sure enough, a couple of blocks and an alleyway later, we followed them right into a cozy and starting-to-get-busy restaurant.  Since we were in Italy, the menu naturally included pasta and Dick’s favorite dish, spaghetti.  And it was so nice to sip a little wine and relax.  Dinner over, we headed back and zonked out.  A typical first day.

Day 2 we drove ten miles (we prefer not to go too far) to Lake Maggiore, the closest of the five large alpine lakes in Lombardy.  It was really pretty, edged with quaint, small towns crowded with red-roofed houses, and huge mountains looming overhead.  After a bit of this and that, we stopped in Luino, a mid-size town on the lake.  Unexpectedly we stumbled upon the information center -- no easy task in Italy.  They’re often well hidden and not signed.  The staff helped us book a nice 3-star room for $49 -- as it turned out, a good value for Italy.  There was a "Fair" in town with a series white tents squatting along the lakeside like gigantic marshmallows.  That evening we went in, hoping for some fun and interesting fast food.  What we got was mostly home improvement ideas.  More meandering around Luino, including dead ends in dark alleys, eventually got us to another good Italian restaurant.  In the areas we explored, the variety of food choices are really limited. There were a few Chinese restaurants, but even they featured pizza.

The next morning the weekly "market" had magically materialized all over town.  Several hundred trucks and large vans, each with huge overhangs in case of heat or rain were parked head to tail along several of the city streets. These markets arrive in the larger towns once a week, transforming the streets into an outdoor mall.  All the things you can find in Nordstroms, and everything you'd want from a well-stocked deli, and much, much more, is sold from these vans.  It was an amazing and colorful display.  We walked for a couple of hours ogling the merchandise.

The rest of Day 3 was easy – another short drive to another beautiful, picturesque lake, Lake Lugano.  We stopped at the lakeside town of Ponte Tresa for a walk and a latte break at a shore-side café.  Nearby we found the Hotel du Lac with a wonderful view, paper-thin walls and a way-overpriced dinner menu.  A long, romantic evening stroll along the waterfront rounded out the day.

Day 4 was Dick’s forty-thirteenth birthday.  We thought it might be nice to stay in Lugano, the Swiss resort town that's appeared to be just a short 10 mile drive across the border.  They have a casino, and Dick loves playing nickel slots.  

Dick interrupts this piece to interject: 
This was the segment where the driver of the "should have been an automatic but wasn't because some people weren't paying attention at the rental counter" Rover realized the word "spaghetti" originally described the usual layout of Italian and Swiss roads.  They are arranged in dense, random networks.  Many are one-way.  Typically, they go in circles or dead end in an alley at the top of a steep hill, and often there's insufficient room to pass another small car or even to think about pulling over to the side of the road to figure out where the hell you are, even if you did have a map that showed a tenth of the existing roads.  Slowing at intersections to decode road signs, which point to a dozen or so possible destinations, most of which won't be on the next signpost you encounter, is also not a good option, because it tends to irritate all the "I'm in a hurry to get to somewhere where I don't have to be in a hurry" drivers with horns behind you.  Because we had yet to fully grasp the significance of these principles and the corollary that states that the complexity of the network increases logarithmically with the population density, we drove to Lugano.  

But once there, we soon realized our mistake.  The town was overfull of cars, crowded with tourists, and full of one-way streets but no parking places.  We both got frustrated and just a bit nippy.  So we gave up and, of course, had to drove all the way back to Italy.  The next lake east, Lake Como, was very picturesque.  But the town of Como, on the western end of an upside-down "Y", was another large, hectic, busy city.  Though we were ready to stop, we kept driving east.  A little side-trip down a less-traveled road lead to a small and restful nature preserve, with sightings of various waterfowl but no out-of-the-way hotels or restaurants.  

By the time we made it to the eastern leg of Lake Como 20 miles away, we were REALLY ready to stop driving.  But it seemed that all the hotels in town were hidden somewhere.  It wasn’t until our second trip through Lecco that we found the Jolly Hotel and prayed they had an available room.  Happily, they did.  This modern, 4-star hotel (part of an Italian chain of Jolly Hotels) offers views of the famous Adda River, had opened just a month ago, and was only charging $100/night including breakfast.  Just what we were looking for!  Actually it was so perfect that we decided to settled in for the next 4 nights.  No more driving!  No more looking for hotels!  We’d just figure out what there was to see and do around Lecco and this arm of Lago de Como.  As it turns out, there’s plenty (see link below).

At this point you’re perhaps wondering if we saw any of the "sights" along the way?  Well, I’m sure we missed some of the best ones.  We did "bag" several very impressive Catholic churches that caught our attention.  We also checked our guidebook occasionally, hoping to reduce our ignorance a bit.  But mostly, it doesn't matter what we see.  Most days we just look for a little adventure and are usually pleasantly surprised by what comes our way.  Perhaps the next time we come to Lombardy we’ll learn about the history of the region or want to see some of the famous sights.  But this time, it was enough to just get a taste of Italy and figure out how traveling works here.

Anyway, that’s how we do it.  Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t.  Sights either show up on our narrow-band look-around screen, or we’re oblivious to them, (and therefore don't know what we missed.)  For us, traveling is about hoping for good weather, trying to feel what it's like to be or live in a different place, and taking the journey -- wherever it brings us.