Rhonda Bracey: At Random

The thing about unplanned days is that any vague plans you had can change. So it was today…

We’d planned to go up to Menaggio on the fast ferry from Como (it doesn’t stop at Torno), but you can’t prebook the fast ferry, except on the day. Because tickets sell out quickly, we got to Como fairly early, but we didn’t read the time in the (Italian language) timetable correctly—the ticket seller said that the 11am time was only for feast days/holidays, but we could take the 12.15pm ferry which would get in about an hour later. We asked for a return ticket only to be told that we could only get a one-way ticket and that we couldn’t buy the return ticket from Como, ONLY at the Menaggio ferry ticket office. He asked when we wanted to return and we said we had to be back in Torno around 5pm as our friend was getting picked up to go to Milan airport. He said that the 3:30pm ferry would be pushing it as we wouldn’t get to Menaggio until close to 1:30 and that would be the earliest we could buy the return ticket and they’d likely be sold out by then. Who runs a service like this?????

Anyhow, it was way too risky, so we decided to stay in Como for the rest of the day, and contribute some more to their economy, catching the not-so-fast ferry back to Torno in the afternoon!

We said goodbye to our friend this evening—as she has a 10am international flight out of Milan (160 km away) tomorrow, she decided to NOT risk getting a car and driver to pick her up at a very early hour from Torno, instead choosing to get picked up late this afternoon and staying overnight in a hotel close to the airport. Knowing the local terrain and inaccessibility of the town much better now, as well as my own risk profile, I’d have done the same!

My sister and I leave the Lake Como area tomorrow, catching several trains to Siena, so we needed to pack too.

Photos are of various food displays in stores we walked past…