Where does one go when you want to get away from it all? Well for me, last weekend was spent in the lakes district north of Milan. I hopped a flight via Amsterdam to Milan and caught a bus up to Lake Como. From there it was a 2.5 hour boat ride up to a small village on the edge of the lake.Varrena with a population of 800 is the perfect jumping off point for lake excursions.
I climbed up the mountain to the castle located above the village. The local map shows what appears to be a small road leading from a monastery up to the castle. Actually it was a dirt trail. At times it was only 10 or so inches wide and required you to push through a row of bushes to continue on. If you are up for the hike it will be a challenge just to find this trail. There are two ways to reach the castle from opposite ends of the village.
The first path I refer to as the 17th century way to get to the castle. The path I took was the 14th century way to storm a castle!
The castle below is where they filmed the end to one of the Star Wars movies. I also saw the house used in Ocean's 13. No picture of that... too far away.
