Milan, Lake Como, Lugano, and Venice – Aug 2025

We arrived in Milan via airplane from the USA in late August. We went into in the Milan downtown area, including a visit to the enormous Duomo, its museum, and the famous covered shopping gallery nearby. On our second day in Milan, we took an 11-hour day trip up to Lake Como (including the towns of Como and Bellagio) and Lugano, Switzerland using a tour bus, which greatly simplified the transportation logistics. Then we started east by train (the Frecciarossa high speed train is wonderful), stopping for one afternoon and an overnight in Venice. In Venice, we took the water bus (the Vaporetto) to Saint Marks Square and then walked back several miles to our hotel via a maze of tiny streets and plazas. The next morning we departed at a comfortable 10am via train to Zagreb, Croatia, which will be covered in the next blog post.

Our hotel in Milan was next to the Garibaldi train station, which was only about two miles from downtown Milan. We took a short tram ride (very easy to use) to Sforzesco Castle and then walked the last half mile to the Duoma plaza area via Dante Street, where this photo was taken (you can see part of the Castle in the background). It is pedestrian-only and lined with shops and cafes. We stopped along here for our first gelatos and a bottle of Gavi wine.
At the end of Dante Street is the huge plaza that contains the absolutely gynormous Duomo of Milan. A Duomo is usually a main cathedral or church (Catholic) of any Italian city that has an Archbishop. This one in Milan is probably one of the largest in the world. Smack in the middle of the plaza is the Duomo Metro stop, which makes it very easy to get here from anywhere in the city.
The Milan Duomo has its own museum in a nearby building. It holds artifacts from the start of the Duomo construction in the 14th century to its completion in about 1965. Yes, it took about 600 years to build. This is an old gargoyle, no longer in use on the cathedral. Gargoyles are mounted at the roof eaves and serve two purposes: the roof water drains out through their mouths, thus keeping the water away from the walls of the cathedral, and they expel evil spirits from the cathedral. I need to figure out how to get some of these for our next house.
The stained glass windows in the Duomo are magnificant to look at while you are inside the cathedral but a little too far away to photograph well. In the adjacent Duomo museum, however, they have a nice close-up display of what some of the panes look like. This pane is about 3 feet tall and 18 inches wide, and appeared to be about the typical size of most of the windows we saw in the Duomo.
For our last day in Milan, it poured rain all day – so we used the subway instead of trams. In the process we discovered an underground passageway from the subway system that surfaced very close to our hotel. Many cities in the world have multiple entrances to some subway stations, sometimes several blocks away. We found this one by zooming in closely on Google maps. These underground passages often have shops and restaurants in them, making it very convenient to pick something up on the way home from work.
Off to the side of the Duomo Plaza in Milan is a world famous covered shopping area by the name of “Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II”
The floors are gorgeously tiled in the shopping Galleria. Susan’s shoe is provided in the top of the picture for scale.
We are not normally in favor of large tour groups but in this case it made sense. We wanted to see several places on and around Lake Como, which is about an hour north of Milan. The public transit logistics were immensely complex. By opting for a tour option we had transport from Milan to the village of Como, a water boat tour of the lake, a boat dropoff and later pickup at the village of Bellagio, a bus ride to Lugano, Switzerland and then back to Milan. We had free time in all locations, the tour guide was more of a transport coordinator than a guide. Total cost for both of us was just under $200 and we saw way more in one day than we could possibly have done on our own.
The Village of Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como
A villa on Lake Como as viewed from our boat ride. We were told that a scene from one of the James Bond movies was filmed here.
A building in the main historic center of town in Lugano, Switzerland. Lugano is just across the border from Italy and has Italian as one of its official languages. It started raining about 30 minutes after we got there but the side streets have covered walk areas. If you are visiting Lake Como in Italy, departing to the west via Lugano makes for a nice loop to then return to Milan at the end of the day.
Our high speed (Frecciarossa) train ride from Milan to Venice (Venezia Santa Lucia) took about three hours and we arrived at about noon. Our hotel (Hotel Abbazia) was a three minute walk from the train station, which is very convenient as it is difficult to drag luggage around the tiled and cobbled pedestrian-only streets of Venice. This is a view of the beautiful arrival salon at our hotel. We would stay here again.
After dropping off our suitcases at the hotel in Venice, we took a water bus (a Vaporetto) all the way through the Grand Canal and got off at Saint Mark’s Square. In this photo, Saint Mark’s Basiica is in the back left and Doge’s Palace is to the right. This whole Piazza area was huge and everything around it was architecturally very beautiful.
Saint Mark’s Basilica at the edge of Piazza San Marco
A zoomed in view of one of the alcoves on the front of Saint Mark’s Basilica. The tile work is exquisite.
Gondolas everywhere. We loved these little bridge crossings of the small canals.
The sunset sky was ridiculously beautiful in Venice. This is a view from a bridge of one of the larger canals, but not the Grand Canal. We departed the next morning to Zagreb, which will be covered in the next Post.

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5 Comments

  2. Great pics! We, too, enjoyed walking around Venice. Though at night, it felt a little scary navigating those narrow passageways…like a vampire might happen upon us at any moment.

    • Fortunately we did not encounter any vampires but now I know what to watch out for next time we go LOL! We hope you guys are well and we miss you.

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