Hi!
Flying into Venice. Want to go to small towns with 4 people. Especially Lozzo di Catone (by the Swiss border, north of Venice) that my girlfriends husbands' family is from.
Question: Should we rent a car or is there a train?
What small towns to visit beside Conegliano?
Also, Want to go to Stresa on Lake Maggiore. Should we train it from Venice to Milan?
Mille grazie.
J. Trute
There is a train station Calalzo-Pieve Di Cadore-Cortina that is very near Lozzo di Cadore and gets you to that cluster of towns. The tracks are currently under repair and are supposed to be completed in March. If you've searched for trains this temporary outage may be your problem. Assuming the trains are back up and running when you want to go it will be about 3 hours on the train. There is also a bus (or a couple of buses technically) that will get you there. Whether you need a car may depending on what you want to do there.
From the Venice airport you will need to take one of the buses or a taxi to Venice Mestre - this is the last spot on the mainland before the bridge to Venice. This is where you will catch the bus or train so be sure you search Venice Mestre.
For Stresa you should take the fast train from Venice Mestre to Milan and then switch to the train to Stresa. The whole thing will probably take 4 hours so Lozzo di Cadore to Stresa would probably be too long a day. But you'll probably be staying somewhere in between.
The other small towns question is really broad. What do you consider small? What are your interests? What are you planning on doing there? What is the aversion to larger cities?
Hope that helps,
=Tod
Hi Tod,
Thanks so much for your prompt and most helpful reply.
My friends husband wants to sip on wine, eat cheese and watch the world go by which you can do in any small town. He doesn't want to be in the crowds!
Interests are to see the sites and get a flavor for the towns. Of course eat like the locals.
Thanks again,
J. Trute
Treviso.
We loved it. 3 days
Poster museum.
Tiramisu was invented there. Camellia Bakery has the best.
Dave,
Thanks. Will definitely go to treviso1
Thanks,
J. Trute
Another vote for Treviso. Other very nice places on the way from Venice to Milan are Padua, Vicenza and Brescia. All very attractive. Vicenza is quieter than the other two. There's also Verona, lovely but probably too touristy and busy for you.
Note that Padua, Vicenza, Brescia and Verona can all be really unpleasantly hot at the very beginning of September. The temperatures seem to drop considerably as you move through the month. Over the last five year Treviso hasn't suffered from oppressive heat at the beginning of September, but from recent personal experience I will say mid-summer there can be awful.
All the places I've mentioned, including Treviso, are known to tourists, just not necessarily to a lot of foreign tourists, and they are not tiny. I'd recommend Googling for population figures and looking at Google Maps to get a sense of the size of the recommended places. A lot of truly tiny places will be quite time-consuming to reach.
