Since I am living in Italy after all, we decided we should explore more parts of the diverse country and head up north. Not sure why I keep picking cold places to visit, but I had heard such great things about Lake Como and Verona that we just had to go see them for ourselves.
I first heard about Lake Como from Chrissy Teigen, as her and John Legend tied the knot there a few years back. Surfing through Pinterest reminded me how much I’ve wanted to see it, and before we knew it we were on our way there.
The train systems in Europe are honestly really great, although sometimes they can be just as expensive as a plane ticket. Como was only about 3 hours from Rome, and we had a quick stop in Milan to change trains. Overall, a very easy journey.
Como’s train station is very tiny and quaint, exactly what you would expect from such a tiny little Italian town. From the train station we just walked across the street and towards what the map called the “medieval district”. We stumbled into a cute piazza and sat down for a quick lunch, looking out on the busy square of people.
The weather was fairly nice, definitely chilly considering we were in the mountains of northern Italy in the middle of February, but the sunshine offered the perfect amount of warmth. It probably wasn’t warm enough for gelato, but of course we got some anyway and strolled along the lake. (Strolling is obviously the best way to enjoy gelato).
This lake is so perfectly picturesque, even in the middle of winter edged by leafless trees and wintery fog. Being from New Jersey and attending school in Miami (both very flat places), mountains never fail to baffle me with their majestic presence.
If you’re ever in Como, make sure to take the tram, called the Funicolare Como-Brunate, up the mountain for 5.50 euros round-trip. The little train car seems straight out of Disney World but it takes you all the way up the mountain where the views are even more incredible. If you go on a clear day it’s even better. (We were stuck with a bit of fog, unfortunately, but it was still gorgeous).
We stayed in an Airbnb about 40 min around the lake by bus, which was super easy to navigate. We could tell it was the off-season because everything was almost eerily quiet. Despite that, Lake Como was overall a gorgeous and quaint town that I would absolutely return to in the future. While the summer months are probably the most fun time of year, it’s possible to enjoy it in the cold winter too. Definitely a trip worth taking.
Bright and early the next morning we were on a train to Verona, once again with a quick stop in Milan to change trains. Only a few hours later we were in Verona, figuring out how to work yet another public transportation system. Luckily Verona is very small and once we were dropped off by one landmark it was extremely easy to find everything else.
Our first stop was one of the most intact Roman arenas in Italy, which is so well kept, in fact, that sometimes concerts and other events take place there. The line to enter was long and since we only had one day to see Verona we didn’t go for a tour of the inside but I imagine it’s really interesting to see since the Roman Coliseum is missing quite a few major pieces.
From the arena, there is a busy pedestrian street full of high-end clothing stores (many names any American would recognize) where we ended up spending a bit of time later in the day. At the end of that street is the area with pretty much all of the main attractions. There’s a beautiful piazza busy with stands selling food, souvenirs, and anything you could imagine. We happened to be there during a huge love festival (it was a few days after Valentine’s Day) so there were even more stands set up than normally I would assume.
Towering over the piazzas (there were three or four in the same area connected by narrow streets) was a large bell tower called Torre di Lamberti that you can pay 5 euro to be able to climb to
the top. BE PREPARED because it is a VERY long way to the top. There’s an elevator you can take up there if you really aren’t able to climb, but we stupidly decided to power through and were puffing by the top. Absolutely gorgeous views of the old city made it worthwhile, even despite my fear of heights. (We took the elevator back down because of my paralyzing fear).
We headed back through the piazzas, grabbing some food along the way, towards Juliet’s house. I had an amazing porchetta, which is a fresh roasted pork sandwich, and a cup of strawberries with melted chocolate (probably offered because of the whole love festival thing).
I’m not a huge fan of the whole romance thing, so being in Verona of all places during a week-long festival celebrating love was not something I had anticipated, and continuing to venture into Juliet’s courtyard was not so wise. That being said, it was really kind of neat to see all of the love letters stuck to the walls and to watch everyone lining up for their chance to rub the right breast of the statue of Juliet (for good luck of course). It would have been much more pleasant if it hadn’t been absolutely packed, but my roommates and I all wrote letters and stuck them to the wall and went on our way.
We strolled around the rest of the city, doing some shopping and visiting the castle on the water briefly, just to kind of walk through and see the outside. The castle to me was so cool because I’ve never really seen a castle in real life, so for sure go check it out because it reinforces all of those cool stereotypes about the medieval times.
Our trip was finally complete and we were definitely exhausted from lugging our bags around for two days (I discovered I am not cut out for backpacking). We hopped back on the train and home to Rome, tired but very content with our weekend. I recommend all of the places we visited, but like I said I feel like both could really be done in one day, especially in the winter!
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