Pioneer35244495059
September 11, 2024
We stayed at Albergo Milano with 2 other retired couples in Sept 2024. We found our stay to be a mix of really nice and some not-as nice things. First, taxi service will not get you to the door of the hotel...you will have to hump your luggage down a steep incline with uneven stone steps. Varenna is on the side of a hill overlooking Lake Como, so you will have to get used to going up and down stairs. The hotel has no elevators in either buildings, so you may have to drag luggage up 2-3 flights of stairs. The very friendly staff does help with this. Our room had a gorgeous view of the lake...it was the high point of our stay. But, the rooms was less than tidy. The couch had a decent sized stain on it, and we had to kill a handful of bugs. The chairs were old rickety dinning room chairs. And some our group had a really tiny room (ours was bugger). There is a fine restaurant at the hotel, we ate there twice in our 3 night stay. Food was inconsistent, one night outstanding and other night so-so. Our service was slow...but that's not unexpected in Europe. It was not cheap, but they have a nice 22e liter of excellent red or white wine. And the view from the terrace of the restaurant was one of the finest we had in our whole trip. Breakfast was quite limited. Lots of typical cheese/meats laid out, but no eggs or sausage and limited pastry. Several of our group could literally not find something to eat. The hotel is situated in the middle of Varenna, so convenient to get to things, however again you had to navigate some really uneven stairs and steep inclines. Like we said, the staff was outstanding...Rick Steves mentioned that on his show. On the last day of our stay, the Italian train service went on a 1 day strike, which no doubt screwed up thousands of tourists counting in train service. But the staff at Milano worked with us very patiently and for panicked travelers like ourselves, that was appreciated. So Milano did deliver the magic of the Lake Como experience. The not-so-great features of the stay were out-weighed by the positive ones.