There is an hour on Lake Como when everything turns to gold: the water, the stone balustrades, the faces on the last ferry. The day-trippers have gone back to Milan. The lake belongs, for a while, to the people who live on it.
We spent a week there in late September, moving between three villages by boat, never by car. It is the only way to see the lake as it was meant to be seen: from the water, slowly.
The villas, from the water
From the deck of the ferry, the great villas appear one after another, each with its own jetty, its own cypress trees, its own story. Some are museums now. Others are still family houses, shutters closed, gardens kept as if the owners might return tomorrow.
Where to eat
The best meal of the week was the simplest: lake fish, butter, sage and a glass of white wine on a terrace no wider than a corridor. The owner's mother still cooks. She does not take reservations, and she does not need to.
On the lake, a good lunch is measured in boats: you arrive on one, and you leave on the last.
The last boat home
Every evening we caught the last ferry back, watching the villages light up one by one along the shore. It became a ritual, then the reason for the trip.
If you go
- Stay in a village, not a city: Varenna or Bellagio for the light, a smaller one for the quiet.
- Buy a weekly ferry pass and leave the car behind.
- Go in September or October, when the lake exhales.
