My family (US) is heading to Europe in late May/early June, and we’ll be finishing our trip in Milan. We arrive on a Tuesday around lunchtime and plan to spend the rest of that day exploring the city while doing day trips on Wednesday and Thursday.
For day trips, we have Wednesday completely open, and on Thursday we have tickets to see The Last Supper at 5:00 PM. Since both destinations we’re considering are about an hour away by train, we’d likely need to leave by around 2:00 PM on Thursday. That would give us roughly 5 hours at our destination if we arrive around 9:00 AM.
We’re deciding between Lake Como and Bologna for these two day trips. Lake Como has been on our itinerary from the beginning, and we were thinking of visiting a few towns and getting around by ferry. Recently, though, Bologna has really caught our interest, especially for the food and possibly walking the portico up to Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca.
We’re struggling with how to split our time, which destination deserves the full day, and which makes more sense for a shorter visit? We were initially leaning toward giving Bologna the full day, but many food tours seem to run until around 2:00 PM, which feels a bit tight for catching a train back (also curious, are those food tours worth it, especially if we only have a half day, or would we be better off exploring on our own?).
On the other hand, I’d hate to feel like we only got a quick glimpse of Lake Como if we only spent a few hours there.
Has anyone here done both as day trips from Milan? How would you divide the time