The wake up alarm for 5:30 AM was quite early, but not as bad as it could have been since we were still adjusting to the time difference, which actually makes it easier to get up early. But 5:30 AM is still early nonetheless.
We showered and got ready for our day in Como and the ferry ride back to Varenna, via the town of Bellagio. I purchased our train tickets via the Trenitalia App, and the tickets were downloaded to my cell phone to show to the ticket agent on the train. That could not have been easier, much better than struggling with a ticket machine at the station. We packed up our backpacks and left the room at about 6:45 AM for the 10 minute walk to the train station to catch our 7:06 AM train to Como, where we are planning on taking the 9:50 AM ferry to Bellagio.
There were quite a few junior high to high school age kids, obviously heading to school, at the station waiting for the train when we arrived at the station (read school bus equivalent in the USA).
We were a little confused by some of the information at the station about the platform, so Stephanie asked one of the school girls there and she helped us out. Unfortunately, the train we were catching was late arriving, and from there, our morning sort of fell apart. We had a connecting train in Lecco, about 45 minutes away, but only had 8 minutes to make the connection there, if everything was on schedule. By the time we arrived in Lecco, the train we were on from Varenna was already running over 10 minutes late, so of course, we missed our connection. We are not sure we would have made it even if we were on time, there were several hundred school kids that had boarded our train along the way before we finally arrived at Lecco, and they were all getting off here to go to school. It was literally a zoo trying to get off the platform via the two small stairways that led into the main station. There were so many kids that the platform and descending stairway were overwhelmed. We were hopeful that maybe our connecting train was also delayed, but had no such luck. Maybe it had been there when we arrived, but it had certainly left by the time we could get down the stairs from the platform we arrived on and go to a train status monitor to see what platform that our connecting train was supposed to depart from. In fact, there were not any trains in the station other than the one we had arrived on.
We now had to make an alternate plan to try and get to Como via a different train route. We consulted the Trenitalia App and the Train Departure schedule at the station, and found a new route to Como via a different train, but that route required another connection in a town called Monza, Italy. We were now going to be about an hour later arriving to Como, too late for the 9:50 AM ferry we were trying to catch, but we knew there was another ferry leaving at 10:50 AM heading to Bellagio, and we could try to make that one instead.
We were a little worried about our tickets, not quite sure if they were actually valid for our new route, but we were still taking Regional trains, so it should be fine. It never mattered, we never were checked for tickets on any of the trains we rode to Como.
We have now concluded that the Italian trains are no where as efficient from a schedule perspective as German or Swiss trains. They seem chronically late, at least the Regional Trains. We were learning a lesson, don’t leave less than 30 minutes for a connection on any regional trains in Italy, they don’t run on time.
We finally arrived in Como at 10:00 AM, and had planned on taking a bus to the ferry terminal before we found out from the information Kiosk at the train station that the ferry dock was only a 10 minute walk away, so we started our walk to the ferry port. We had tried to look at the route to the ferry dock from the train station on Google Maps before we left, but there was some uncertainty on the exact location of the ferry dock, and it seemed farther away that it actually was.
There was a sheet with some information on the desk in the kiosk that stated there would be an Italian Rail strike on Sunday, September 22. This was our first indication of the potential for a rail strike that we had seen or heard about. We did not ask about it then, not really giving it much thought at first. However, the more we thought about it, the more we needed to figure out if it was true since we have plans to travel on Sunday from Varenna to Riomaggiore, all by train. If there was going to be a strike, it would impact our travel plans. We just planned on getting more information on the potential strike once we arrived back in Varenna later in the day.
When we arrived at the Ferry Dock, there was already a long line of people queued up to board the 10:50 AM Ferry, and another shorter line to purchase tickets. We were worried about not getting on the ferry, and if we did get aboard, not getting a seat on the outside decks for photos due to the large number of people in line ahead of us. However, it ended up working out just fine, we got an outside seat on the upper deck behind the wheelhouse.
Unfortunately, it was not a very sunny day outside, and the overcast skies did not make for colorful photos. It was nice that we just happened to be sitting in front of a couple from the USA with a private tour guide, so we overheard a lot of free information that she give them on a lot of the sights we passed on our two hour ferry ride to Bellagio.
The ferry made several stops before Bellagio, and we overheard the tour guide behind us explain about several interesting things to do at each town we stopped at along the way. The couple getting the information was staying in or near to Como, and it was sort of funny, whatever the guide suggested, they said that wanted to do.
However, there was no way they had that much time, they just kept agreeing as the guide suggested more and more things to do at each town we passed by. What was even funnier was that the couple had no idea that this ferry ride was over two hours long. We heard them tell their guide that they needed to be back in Como shortly after we were scheduled to arrive on this ferry in Bellagio. The guide was going to have to get them return tickets to Como on the hydrofoil, it is much faster than this slower ferry.
We arrived at Bellagio at about 12:45 PM, and got off of the ferry, along with all of the other passengers. Bellagio is one of the most visited cities on Lake Como, and it was pretty crowded. We stopped at a restaurant and had some lunch, ordering one pizza each, along with a glass of red wine. The pizza was really good, better than we had for lunch yesterday. It was really too filling, we should have split one instead of both ordering one each, they were thicker with more toppings, and therefore, much more filling than the ones we had yesterday.
After lunch, we headed along the walkway on the waterfront to take some photos, and then headed into the town to do some shopping. We thought we would be able to find a larger grocery store here since it is a larger town than Varenna, but our Google Search showed only one small store. We headed there via the Google Map directions, but they were not accurate enough for us to find the store. As we were heading in another direction, still trying to find the store, Stephanie took a tumble on the rocky steps, she was looking at her phone and missed a step. She fell hard on her knee, and her cell phone was slammed onto the sidewalk. Stephanie was a little stunned, and worried she had really been hurt, but luckily, it ended up only being a bruised and skinned knee. However, her cell phone was much worse off. The whole side of the front glass was broken, and it would not function correctly. We would try to get the phone to open from the locked main home screen, but there were no buttons visible on the screen and swiping did not work either. We tried for a while to get it to work, but it was no use. We thought there was a cell phone repair business nearby after doing a Google Search on my phone for cell phone repair shops, but apparently, it was a scam through Google. It was only a Tobacco Shop, and they knew of no cell phone repair stores in Bellagio. For some reason, Google listed it as a phone repair store, apparently just to generate more business there.
We looked for any repair shops in nearby towns, and found one at a city across the Lake from Bellagio, which we had to stop at anyway on the ferry route from Bellagio to Varenna. We opted to get off there to check out the phone store. It was about a 10 minute walk to the store, and they did not speak a lot of English, but enough for us to know that any repairs would not happen until Monday at the earliest. And, they had to send it off to a repair facility in another town after the weekend. That was not an option. We talked to them about a replacement phone, but their inventory was really low, and that really wasn’t an option either. We did happen to do another Google Search for a grocery store, and found out there was one not much farther up the road, so we headed there.
The grocery store was really nice, and quite large. At least something good was coming from this added stop. We picked up some red wine, some bandages and an ice pack for Stephanie’s knee, and headed back to the ferry for the ride across the lake to Varenna. Of course, now we had to purchase another ticket, our original ferry ticket was not valid for getting off and back on at intermediate stops.
Once we were back in Varenna, we checked out the ferry schedule for tomorrow morning. We needed to determine if it was feasible to take a morning ferry back to Como tomorrow because we had found several phone repair stores located there through a Google search, and one in particular with great review ratings about replacing broken screens. It was when we were at the ferry ticket office that we saw another notification about the rail strike on Sunday, this notice also included information for making alternate bus reservations for travel to Milano Centrale, the main rail station in Milan. We now knew the strike was really going to happen, so we needed to do some additional investigation once we got back to the room where we had better wi-fi access.
We found out that the strike was to start at 3:00 AM on Sunday morning, and last until 2:00 AM on Monday morning. Apparently, it had been scheduled since August, and although we had checked for strikes while planning this trip, we had not seen anything scheduled. Lesson learned, keep up to date on Italian train strikes, which are generally scheduled well in advance, with published online notifications. One possible difference was that this is a subsidiary of the main train company Trenitalia. It is possible that they do not post as much information about their strikes.
We sent a WhatsApp text to Vittorio, our contact for this apartment, to inquire about staying an extra night, but his return text said our apartment was already booked. We also sent an email to our Hotel in Riomaggiore about checking in a night early if we need to leave here tomorrow, a day early, to avoid the strike. We did not immediately hear back from them. We knew from the strike notification we saw at the ferry ticket office that there is a travel agency here that is coordinating an alternate bus transport to Milano Centrale on Sunday, but we were not sure if the buses were full.
There is an early bus that is scheduled arrive before our scheduled train connection from Milano Centrale to Riomaggiore, but we are not even sure if that train will be operational. Some trains are kept running on a very limited basis, other’s are replaced by minimal bus service. We decided that getting our travel arrangements for Sunday figured out will take precedence over Stephanie’s phone repair trip to Como tomorrow. We need to find out if we can get to Milan on the bus on Sunday, and then get a hotel there until we can make it to Riomaggiore on Monday instead of Sunday if the connecting train is also part of the strike.
If both of the buses are already full and we can’t leave on Sunday as planned, we might have to leave Varenna a day early, and head somewhere where we can get a hotel room until the strike is over, and we can resume our trip. Maybe they are striking for improved train timeliness……..we only wish!
We had done as much as we could tonight until we find out about the bus availability tomorrow for getting to Milan on Sunday. We headed out to dinner at the Il Molo restaurant, opting to have some of their pasta dishes we had seen on the menu there yesterday during our lunch. We needed some nice relaxing time after the hectic day. We might be starting to lower our high opinion about Italy, especially the transportation, not having been here in a while for a land trip. We had certainly had much better experiences in other European countries with train schedule accuracy and reliability.
Dinner was really nice, the food and wine were both excellent, and we had another table near the waterfront with great views. Stephanie had a Penne Pasta with ham, in a white sauce, and I had meat Tortellini on spinach pasta with a red sauce. Dinner was a nice respite from our troubles today.
After dinner, we headed back to the apartment, it was about 8:45 PM, and we needed to work on this blog post and try to formulate a good plan for our day tomorrow. Stephanie is a little sore from her tumble today, but luckily, only minor scrapes and bruises. However, it is a different story for her cell phone, it is broken and unusable.