Lake Como, Italy

Friday, June 20, 2025

We woke up at 6:00am, much earlier than originally intended, but it allowed us to leave Venice. We grabbed a couple of croissants and a cappuccino to go on the way, and walked towards our train station. It was so fun to see all the workers entering Venice for the day. Very few actually live in Venice; most people boat and train in. The city was very quiet in the morning, with businesses boarded up and everyone walking silently to their posts. We were one of the very few people walking out of the city that early in the morning.

At the train station, we saw many groups of people who were just learning about the transportation strike and their trains being cancelled. We felt so good knowing that we would be able to stay on schedule and make it to our next location.

Our first stop was in Milan, a city we almost chose to spend the night in when we were originally planning stops for this trip. Instead, we made a connection to Lake Como. During the train ride to Como, Jeffrey researched what to do in and around the city.

First, he found a vintage stick shift Fiat, and even reached out to the company to see if he could do a practice run at driving stick shift before renting it. (Jeff has driven stick shift twice for a total of 15 minutes and was confident enough after watching 2 YouTube videos on the train to reach out to this company. Like, what?! I can’t get over how stupidly natural he is at stuff like this. It’s awesome and annoying at the same time. It would’ve taken me months of hands-on practice to learn to drive stick shift.) He then moved on to looking at option B, which was finding an actual car to rent, and option C, which was renting a Vespa.

After discussing it for most of the train ride, we decided that a Vespa was the best bet to exploring the city. Jeffrey found a company that we could rent a Vespa from for about $100 US dollars. They needed an international license, and possibly with a motorcycle license (we still aren’t 100% sure to this day).

So, Jeff applied for his international driver’s license online. Once we arrived at the rental place, he fast-tracked his international license by paying an extra $25. The motorcycle license, which we thought we might need, was a button you could click on and off when applying for the license, so, of course, Jeff clicked it on. There was no extra paperwork or proof to turn this “button” on. In a matter of minutes, they were collecting and making copies of Jeff’s passport, license, and international license.

It took a bit longer than we thought it would, but finally, we got the CLASSIC (brand new!!) red Vespa. Ah! I stayed with the scooter while Jeff took our luggage to a storage locker a couple of shops down. Once he returned, we were off.

He didn’t tell me this until after the fact, but he was quite nervous driving this scooter around for the first few turns. The road was busy, and neither of us had ever driven internationally. He was cool, calm, and collected, though, so I never knew he was nervous. 

Driving through downtown Como, I really questioned why the rich and famous came here. I always heard of the Kardashians vacationing in Lake Como and celebrities getting married in this lake-side city, but driving through the streets near the train station, I just didn’t get it.

That is…until we drove up into the mountains and you caught your first glimpses of the lake. Wow. Now I get it. Holy cow, I get it. This place is GORGEOUS. The cute homes, the winding narrow streets, the greenery, the overlooks of the water, the sea plane landing in the middle of the lake. Absolutely breathtaking. I really enjoyed being a passenger princess and riding on the back of the Vespa because it meant I got to take pictures and videos, none of which did justice to the experience. 

At the top of one pass, we decided to stop at a restaurant called Briisa De Ness overlooking the lake and grab some lunch. We each ordered a margarita pizza (just cheese), and gawked at the view. What was life? It was just incredible.

After the best lunch views ever, we hopped back on our Vespa and kept driving through the hillsides of Lake Como. Once back down to the lake, we found a ferry and bought tickets to cross the lake and explore the other side. One thing about Jeffrey is that he loves ferries and the idea of being able to take your vehicle and cross a body of water, so he was pumped to be able to do this. After waiting a few minutes for our turn, we drove onto the ferry and sailed across the lake. It was so pretty to see all of the lake and each side of the lake in one view. 

On the other side, we continued riding, seeing catamarans, sailboats, and wind surfers in the water. There were also many! (Zoom in on the picture to the left to see them!) We drove through long tunnels going about 45mph (it felt wayyy faster). After about 5 hours on the Vespa, we were quite tired and ready to call it for the day (we had to return it at 6:00 anyway). 

We started making our way back and stopped at the Como War Memorial, which honors the lives lost during WWI, where kids were playing in the water. We walked around a little, taking in the water views one last time before beginning the short trek to return our Vespa.

We then went to a gas station to refill the scooter. That….was quite confusing. After numerous tries and some Googling, we flagged down a postal worker who was kind enough to help us. Even though we had ridden the scooter for 5 hours, we had barely used any gas, so when he started pumping the gas, it immediately overflowed. Because we had used so little, the 10 euros we had put in the gas pump gave us a gift certificate for the remaining money we didn’t use. We gifted it to the postal worker since we were leaving Italy the next morning. Who knows if that was just more work for him or something he’d actually use, but regardless, we were so appreciative of his help in figuring out the gas pump. It truly didn’t make any sense to us, and even if we returned, I still don’t think I’d be able to fill up the scooter.

We returned the Vespa back to her home, and I immediately got sad. I loved that Vespa. For days, I would tell Jeffrey, “I miss my Vespa.” I wish we had roads in the states where it made sense to ride scooters from place to place. I have no desire to ride a motorcycle, but a Vespa through the countryside? Heck yeah.

After getting our bags from the storage unit, we walked back to our apartment, which was on the top floor, of course. I don’t know how we managed to choose Airbnbs that were always on the top floor of buildings with no elevators. 

We entered the apartment to glorious air conditioning and crashed on the couch for a bit. We were exhausted from being in the sun and wind all day. After a while, we started researching restaurants, and Jeff and I both found the same restaurant on Google (researching in separate rooms), so we decided to try it. After walking the quarter mile there, we learned it was reservation only, and they were booked. It sounded like such a good restaurant, and obviously it was. (I believe it was called IL Pacchero 2.0.)

At this point, we just needed something, so we went to the local grocery store with 20 minutes left before they closed. We decided we wanted tacos. We each took a few items from our mental list, including breakfast items and snacks, and took off. The grocery store aisles were “one way” so if you missed anything on a previous aisle, you had to “break the rules” and go against the grain of their one-way system. 

I could not believe how difficult it was to find taco items. The closest thing we could find to taco seasoning was a burrito “kit” that had a flavoring packet. We ended up topping our tacos with parmesan cheese because that was literally the only not-in-a-block cheese of any kind they had. They had parmesan and mozzarella in basically any shape or form you wanted, but no shredded cheese of any nature. We also got some chocolate chip cookies, a couple yogurts, and some chocolate muffins for the morning (which were glorious considering I just couldn’t stomach the croissants anymore). 

While we ate our makeshift tacos, we called both our families to tell them about our day and share some pictures via the “share screen” feature on FaceTime. We then took showers in the wonderfully hot water this Airbnb had before going to bed.