Travels With Mike and Mary Joy: Lake Como

We flew out of MSP on United at 10:44 on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 2017, arriving at Newark after an uneventful flight. Newark Airport has apparently handed all its restaurant concessions to one company, and all of its restaurants get bad reviews on Tripadvisor, so we had picked up sandwiches at the New French Bakery at MSP.

After about four hours we flew out to Milan Malpensa, arriving there around 7:40 a.m., about an hour early, which messed up my planning, since I didn't have train schedules for that early. I bought tickets all the way to Lierna at the Malpensa Express counter. It turned out that we could have saved a few euros because we were over 60, but I didn't know that and the guy at the counter didn't tell us. Later, on the Lake Como ferries, the senior age was 65, so only I got the discount.

To get to Lecco, Varenna, Lierna, etc., on the eastern shore of Como, you can pick up a train from either Milano Porta Garibaldi or Milano Centrale. I wasn't sure of the schedules, so we went all the way in to Centrale. To get to Lierna, where we were staying, you have to change trains either in Lecco and go on the local train to Lierna, or in Varenna, and come back eight minutes to Lierna. Normally, the local trains run every hour in either direction, but they take an hour off around noon, so we made the wrong choice, got off in Lecco, and had to wait there over an hour. Amazingly, though, right in the small station there is an ATM for a major bank, so we were able to pick up some euros. Nowadays the airports are filled with ATMs for cash exchange bureaus, which I've heard don't have the good bank exchange rate. There are also a lot of these on the streets in tourist areas.

We finally arrived in Lierna and walked the very short distance to our B&B, Casa Nini, where we were greeted and settled into our very nice room by the owner, Sr. Zoofito. Then our German friend Marika arrived from the beach, and she and we returned there, for a good lunch at the beach restaurant.

We had originally intended to stay in Varenna, one of Rick Steves's "back door" places. But we couldn't find reasonable accommodations there for us and Marika. Lierna is a real "back door," much less touristed than Varenna, with fewer transportation options, but with pretty good connections to Varenna and almost as cute.

You can't buy train tickets at the station in Lierna--no one's there. You have to go down the hill a few blocks to the Sisters' Cafe and buy them there. We took the eight-minute ride to Varenna, and on the walk down to the lakefront bad luck struck--Mary Joy twisted and sprained her left ankle. Later, at a pharmacy in Lierna, she got a compression bandage and chemical ice packs--the pharmacist was very helpful. A few days later, someone on the tour told us that sprains should be treated with RICE--rest, ice, compression and elevation. We've managed, at times, the last three, but Mary Joy wasn't going to come all this way and not do as much walking as possible. This was somewhat like when, in 2009, I fell from a ladder and injured my knee a week before we left for Paris. An MRI didn't show any serious damage (though the knee has sometimes been unhappy ever since), and my doctor, when I told him I would have to do a lot of walking, told me to take Alleve, and if that didn't work, use the Tramadol prescription that he was giving me. As it happened, we walked all over Paris, and while the Alleve didn't help much, the Tramadol always did the trick. At that time, you didn't hear much about the danger of opioid addiction, but I didn't have any problems giving up the Tramadol when we got back home. Mary Joy's ankle was swollen and painful for the rest of the trip.