Lake Como Day Trip from Milan: Pick One Town and Stay There
An honest Lake Como day trip guide — why hopping between Bellagio, Varenna and Como is the wrong plan, how long the boats actually take, and what to do instead.
Lake Como is an easy day trip from Milan, and it's the one part of my Italy trip where I'd give quite different advice to what I actually did.
So this is the honest version rather than the postcard one.
What I did, and why I'd change it
The standard Lake Como day is: train to Como, boat up the lake, stop at Bellagio, stop at Varenna, come back. That's roughly what I did.
The boat took about an hour and a half in total.
And here's my honest reaction: the towns all looked much the same. Bellagio is billed as the "Pearl of Lake Como", Varenna gets described as the quieter, prettier alternative, and in practice they're variations on the same thing — attractive lakeside towns with coloured buildings, narrow streets and a lot of other day-trippers doing exactly the same circuit.
None of it was bad. But I spent a good chunk of the day on boats travelling between places that turned out to be broadly interchangeable, and I don't think I got much for it.
What I'd do instead: pick one town and go up
Here's the plan I'd actually recommend.
1. Pick one town. Any of them. Genuinely — the differences between them matter far less than the guidebooks suggest, and choosing one immediately buys you back two or three hours of boat time.
2. Get to the highest point you can. This is the part that's actually worth the effort. The view of the lake from above is the thing that makes Lake Como special — the water, the mountains dropping into it, the towns as small clusters of colour around the shore. From lake level, you're just in a nice town. From above, you understand what everyone's talking about.
Most of the towns have some way up — a funicular, a path, a road to a viewpoint. Find it and use it.
3. Then have a slow day at the water. Find a good restaurant with a view, sit down, and stay there. That's what the lake is for, and it's what I'd optimise the day around if I went again.
I didn't do the funicular or the walk up myself, and that's precisely the omission I'm flagging — I did the horizontal version of this day and would recommend the vertical one.
Getting there from Milan
Trains from Milan to Como take under an hour and run frequently, which is what makes this a comfortable day trip rather than an expedition. Varenna is also directly reachable by train if you'd rather start further up the lake.
Boats connect the towns, and this is where the time goes. A single hop is manageable; stringing three or four together is what eats the day.
Is Lake Como worth a day of your trip?
If you're in Milan for more than a couple of days, yes — it's beautiful, it's easy, and it's a complete change of pace from the city.
But temper the expectations. Lake Como is a place to sit still and look at water and mountains. Treated as a sightseeing circuit with a checklist of towns, it will underwhelm you, which is more or less what happened to me. Treated as a slow day with one good view and one good meal, it's excellent.
Related reading
- 11-day Italy itinerary — the full route including Milan
- One day in Venice
- Cinque Terre day trip from Florence