Well we made it to Varenna. It was a long day of traveling to get here but here we are.
The trip was pretty uneventful. We flew from Calgary to London (Heathrow) on Air Canada. Not my first choice for Airlines but we bought the tickets on my Aeroplan points so it is what it is. We did get the a row behind one of the galleys so there was lots of leg room which was great. We switched terminals in London and after going through another round of security wandered around a bit as we waited for our gate. The trip to Milan was with Luftansa. It was fine.
Our first night is in Varenna which is on Lake Como. We took a bus from the airport to the central train station. This was a bit over an hour. We purchased train tickets and got on a train. This is where things got a bit iffy as we weren’t 100% sure we were on the right train. It was headed in the right direction and when we asked one of the conductors he waved us on and said something about transferring somewhere before he disappeared. It was a beautiful train ride along Lake Como after leaving Milan. It turned out that the train we were on didn’t stop in Varenna. We got off a couple of stops later and had to wait for another train to take us back. Not a big deal but after being up for 20 hours or so at this point it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We got into Varenna at 8:45pm local time. No cab to be found at the train station and for some reason I couldn’t get through to the hotel on my cell. So we walked. In the rain. Fast forward an hour and we made it to the hotel (Hotel Eremo Gaudio). Tired and very happy to have a bed to fall into.