The rest of the trip will feel odd without a motorcycle. There is such agency that comes with a vehicle, and an added immediacy or presence on a motorcycle. A motorcyclist engages with his or her environment in a way that no other mode of travel offers. I never feel like a tourist on a bike; rather I feel part of the landscape, as I feel the curvature of little pieces of earth as I wend my way down the road. Bellagio to Milan today was an early day. We woke up in this fancy little hill-town, and were out of the door even before our hostess was even preparing breakfast, at about 7am.
I wanted to get some footage of the Bellagio waterfront, which I think must look a little like the French Riviera. Huge, ornate, colonial era (or likely older) hotels are built on the hillside. Terraced cafes and patios extend to the edge of the lake, where ferries and boats arrive. The blue water extends for miles, when it dissolves into thunderingly intense, steep mountains. The mountains are so high that there are quite visibly other weather patterns at the peak, and at 7am the mountain precipices were gently carving into the wispy morning clouds. Even as we groggily got back on our bikes to race back to Milan, the sight was idyllic, and so powerfully beautiful I could almost cry. I hope I get to come back here someday.
We rushed off around twisty roads back towards Lecco, stopping in Limonte and any other towns blessed a beneficence of the morning light. We wound our way through the city of Lecco, and through our last tunnels of the trip, wondering how we would feel without bikes for the remainder of our journey.
I’m sure it will feel a bit odd, but we’re off to an almost holy pilgrimage for Italian motorcycle aficionados. The Moto Guzzi Museum was cool, but a guided tour at the Ducati factory would be legendary.
Returning our bikes to Claudio in Milan, we headed straight for Milano Centrale train station, to get tickets to Bologna and Borgo Panigale!
So with no restaurants anywhere in town, alas we succumbed to McDonalds like a couple of typical American tourists. Finally on the road by 10, the GPS told us we could be to the top of Lake Como by noon (estimated ETA of about 1), and then back down the eastern side of the lake by around 3, when the Museo Moto Guzzi opened.
We rode back up through the tolls in Como, then up the western side of the lake, not stopping every few miles for pictures like we had done two days prior, even though the landscape was so rich and varied, only a few major landmarks looked familiar. The temperature gauge on our bike was showing about 4-6C, a little warmer than yesterday, but still kind of chilly trying to get up the lake as fast as possible.
We didn't really stop until a town called Domaso, a little north of Gravadona where we had a pizza a couple of days ago.
There was a beautiful scene with a sailboat situated in the middle of the lake, and I left the bikes and ran back to frame it within the horizon between the two distant mountains... towering out of the water.
We rode on up the lake, and must have crossed the Fiume Mera, up along the eastern edge of Lago Mazzola. The area looked much more industrial than the vacation paradise of the previous lakes, but we were low on gas (not to mention unsure we had reached the top of the lake yet), so we pushed on towards a town built into the side of a mountain, which I'm pretty sure was Novate Mezzola along the Pozzo di Riva.
We were ahead of schedule, invigorated by the ever-changing scenery (the fall greenery and palm trees had become more scrub brush on the mountainside), so we tried riding up the little streets in town to get a better camera angle at the valley below, even though the inclines were dizzying. Alex has ridden Enduro for years, and though I knew I could get up the hill, I wasn't so sure I could get down.
The streets were extremely narrow as well, so after another photo-inspired stop, we decided to find some hills somewhere down the road where we could do some real mountain riding, after stopping for gas somewhere around Campo. Unfortunately, one wrong turn at Trivio Fuentes put us on the highway, through tunnels for 30-40 km, almost all the way to Varenna.
So we decided to backtrack northward, and find some winding roads up the mountain. We found a route up through Bellano, that make the word "twisties" seem like a pathetic parlance to describe our route up the mountain.
We ascended hundreds of feet in minutes, with one hairpin after another, following behind a commercial school bus, whose driver was better with ten ton vehicle (honking at every corner), than I was on two wheels. One blind 270' turn after another, ascending out of the town into forest, then into little farm towns, on roads about half the width of a normal traffic lane in NYC.
Church in Pradello, Como Italy
We stopped at several amazing churches as we passed through little hillside villages like Pradello and Vendrogno, as the sun sank in the sky, until we could no longer see the lakes, only snow caps in the distance.
Church in Vendrogno, Como, Italy
By the time we got to Margno, the sun was casting long shadows over the mountains, and we were worried we might be a little late to get down to Lecco.
So we wound our way back down the mountains, back and forth down rural hillside roads, that looked more like paved donkey paths than avenues for tourists, until we found a larger highway.
We were waylaid by a train, but found ourselves at the Moto Guzzi Museum at exactly 3pm, when the museum opened for only an hour a day. The museum was spectacular, but I will tell that story in another article.
I think we've been extremely lucky on this trip. I've done some research on where we have gone, but not a great deal. Our routes have been loosely coordinated, and our lodging plans have basically consisted of finding WiFi somewhere in the afternoon, and finding a reputable hotel with parking on Expedia.
I had saved Bellagio for the last night, as several people had highly recommend the beauty of this resort town, situated at the base of the two legs of Lake Como (shaped like an upside down "Y")
We found a hotel called Il Vicolo (while stopped in the city of Lecco) an extremely modern hotel, with surprising luxury for under a hundred Euro per night (split of course between two travelers).
We unpacked, and headed out on our bikes to explore the hillside town, and find the only restaurant open in town, at the Hotel Suisse, right on the waterfront.
The Route:
Domaso:
Campo, and towns north of Lake Como:
Switchbacks and Towns in the Hills above Bellano (Pradello, Vendrogno, Margno)
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