Italian Switzerland boarders

It is difficult to travel by boat from Lugano to Lake Como towns, as they are not on the same lake :-)

Switzerland and Italy are both in the Schengen one, but they do not belong to the same custom area. Documents should not be checked in theory, but you should better have your passport with you as police controls are always possible, more likely if you look to come from a long distance. Usually police of one of the two countries boards the train and makes random checks while the train is running.

Ordinary luggage will not be checked, but if you look to have a lot of things you may be checked and you could have to pay import taxes. This frequently happens to Swiss citizens that go shopping in Italy for lower prices and may be taxed for things like too much prosciutto being imported back in Switzerland; or if they suspect you are a currency smuggler. If you are caught with 10000 euro or more of undeclared currency, you are in trouble.

Please clarify..... "was going to use one or the other"? Lugano and Milan? Lugano and Lake Como? Either way you can't take a boat from Lugano to Lake Como.

If you have not been to Lake Como, we just went for the first time and the scenery left us speechless. Literally sat on the patio of our little hotel in the hills above Bellagio and stared at the lake for hours and hours, just kept the spritzes coming. I wanted to burn it into my retina.

Because of the terrain, traveling in that area is not easy or speedy. You may want to consider picking one pretty place to stick, and renting a boat for several hours to just enjoy the lake. I'm a checklist traveler who wants to fill my itinerary each day, but Lake Como was so beautiful I'm glad I didn't try.

Donna -

I am going to now use Lugano as a base with a large apartment vs. hotel.
So, it is about a 30m bus to ferry and ferry to Bellagio and/or Varenna (two separate days).
I think it is the bus ride where the crossing is.

Milan I was going in for a day (1:15 by train).

If I were alone, I'd have one small bag and just meander.
But I have a companion who packs large, thus the extended stay at a base and day tripping.

So, in evaluating, if the border crossing was fairly time consuming, I might rethink the home base thing.

Hi Mark,

Sounds really great.
I looked at hotels in Varenna and they were $300+ a night.
Thus, I will use Lugano (about 40m away as a base).

Where did you stay?

is the back-and-forth entry/reentry difficult?

No. I doubt if you will even notice you are crossing borders.