Italy Part I: Lake Como

We had the best time on our honeymoon! Italian food is our love language and our vacation of choice revolves around great food and wine, beautiful scenery, and waterside hangs… so it couldn’t have been a better destination to celebrate our marriage. It was my first time to Italy and Matt’s first time exploring the areas we decided to visit during our trip. We kicked things off in Lake Como… what a special place. We were wonderstruck by the immense amounts of beauty… the sweeping mountain views and sorbet color homes dotted through the hills and down to the water’s edge. We will definitely be back in the future!

Since these posts will be acting as guides, I want to share our thoughts from each destination, as we learned a lot along the way about how we’d do things differently next time. As you do on newbie vacations! We left booking hotels a little last minute because our wedding planning took up so much of our time and energy this summer, so ended up booking a cute Airbnb in Torno. I would definitely suggest booking a hotel instead (especially if it’s your honeymoon!). Airbnb can be awesome, but you really have to do your research.

Although the view and being on the water was pretty magical, the logistics were not easy. The home sat down by the water, so in order to get to town, we had to basically hike up a hill for 15 minutes, and then walk another 5-10 to get down to the restaurants, etc, every time. Torno is super small and didn’t have a ton of restaurant/shop options, either. Also, the bed was rock hard, haha. We got pretty crafty though and were able to make it semi-comfortable, but it wasn’t great on our jet lag to not sleep soundly. So moral of the story, I would suggest booking a hotel in a better location (and well in advance!) if you’re planning a Lake Como visit.

We really wanted to stay at Grand Hotel Tremezzo, but it was booked, but will definitely be staying here next time. On our first full day on the lake, we hired a guy to take us around on his boat, which was so fun! Definitely the highlight of this leg of the trip. Passing by all of the mansions was so fun. Clooney, included of course. We made a pitstop at Grand Hotel Tremezzo for lunch to get a taste of the property, and we loved it. The town of Tremezzino was just so cute! Easy to walk to restaurants and shops, so logistically much easier and enjoyable.

After lunch, we cruised over to Bellagio and spent a couple of hours exploring. We had lunch and vino and then picked up gelato to walk around a bit. To be honest, it felt very touristy to me. I’m glad we got to see it, but nothing really to recommend here from our short visit.

The next day we had lunch at Mandarin Oriental, which was another beautiful property. It was a little rainy the rest of the day, so we decided to pick up homemade pasta, cheese, bread, and wine from a local market and cook ourselves. We turned on music and watched the sun go down over the lake, it was such a good night!

Here are the things we had on our list and didn’t get to make it to all, but making a note for future trips…

What to do in Lake Como

visit Villa Carlotta
rent a boat for the day and bring a picnic and wine (next time)
make dinner reservations at II Gatto Nero
dinner at Al Veluu
hire a boat to take you around
lunch at Isola Comacina
visit Villa Balbiano
lunch at Villa D’este

Some captures from our time spent on the lake!