Full Day Lake Como

We decided to hire a car with driver for the day while staying at Villa D’este. Our driver Giussepe was excellent. He was very knowledgeable, took us to many of the towns on Lake Como and allowed us to maximize our limited time visiting. Highly recommend.

Giuseppe was very helpful and accommodating. He came prepared with a list of suggested sights to see but asked us for our input as to what we wanted to see. He helped us develop an outline within the 8 hours allotted to make our wishes come true. He is an excellent driver. Very good communicator. Very attentive to our needs and interests. We highly recommend him and the Enrico Limo company to anyone who is looking for a very professional chauffeur / guide opportunity. Their car (Mercedes E350?) was amazingly roomy and comfortable. Wow!

We thought that it would be good to book this all day driving tour around Lake Como as an efficient and economical way to see as much as possible. Luca our driver arrived with his Mercedes van and asked what we wanted to see and we said everything so everything is what we saw. He was local in the sense he lived in Milan but knew and awful lot about the roads and the various villages. He was very enthusiastic in telling us with evident pride about all the places we saw. We would pull up on the sides of roads where it was safe to look at views or spy on things like George Clooney's house (poor man must get sick of the number of boats that slow down in front of his house). Any way we drove north and stopped at Tremezzo and then Menagio. Luca will tell us what to look for in each place and we would walk around for about half an hour and get a taste of what the village was like. Sometimes it was longer. We drove further north with Luca explaining the villages and as we got to the very north of the lake I was astonished to see the Swiss Alps with snow on them so close you could almost touch them. Then we drove on to Varenna which I particularly wanted to see and we had time to stroll around and to have a nice lunch by the lake. The thing about Lake Como is everywhere is heaving with the humanity of tourists. The place is overcrowded and doesnt have the infrastructure to support such crowds. The pictures of towns like Como, Tremezzo and Mennagio, Bellagio and Varenna make them look like ideal little villages but add 25000 people to that picture and you get the idea. But after the crowds at Varenna Luca took us on a magical tour where there were no tourists and nothing but mountain roads and sublime views. We drove south after Varenna and onto increasingly quieter roads we drove through Lenno which is really rather industrial and then climbed up on winding roads till we got to the tiny church of the Madonna del Ghisallo a kind of shrine to dead bicyclists but it was the lookout and view of the entire lake from hundreds of metres up without another tourist in sight that took our breath away. We then continued driving around the edge of the lake stopping at yet more spectacular lookouts until we got to a small dirt road. Luca drove us up here and onto a private property of a lady he knows. We were able to stand on her terrace and take photos of the lake, the Alps everything what a place to live! I was jealous of the old lady. Then we drove on through picturesque villages till we got to Nesso and stopped and got out and admired the waterfall from the top at the road bridge crossing the fall. You could get really good photo of the falls cascading all the way down to the lake it was magical. Luca took us to the little gelato shop near the bridge which must have the greatest views of lake Como and we had a gelato and admired the view. We continued driving along the lake but at an elevation and then drove through Como and back to our hotel. It was a great day out we got to see so many things you could not ordinarily see given the public transport around Como. Luca was enthusiastic and knowledgeable and asked us lots of questions about Australia so the conversation was great. I cannot recommend this tour highly enough. Do it you will be glad you did.

It seemed from the description that the tour operator will have some involvement with the tour planning etc. but it was essentially a chauffeur driven car. Didn’t even get a revert from the company when I asked them to help plan the itinerary. The driver in fact didn’t know English and wasn’t even from the Como region (he was from Milan) so didn’t have much idea regarding the local geography and how to get to places. We ended up wasting a lot of time finding out about how to get to places, translation, incorrect timings for car ferries etc. which wasted our day. The car was good, he was a good natured nice driver but didn’t meet our expectations of what we had booked