Milan to Veranna

Depends on "decent" definition. Shuttle buses run about every 20 minutes (two different companies). The bus shuttle to central station takes at least 35-40 minutes, longer if it's a week day and there is traffic (I arrived about that time and it took 50 minutes). There's a train each hour or so to Varenna (http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html). The train ride is an hour. Best case scenario (no late plane, no baggage claim, catch the bus & train perfectly, tickets purchased ahead of time), you're looking at a Varenna arrival time of at least 6 p.m.. Realistically I'd think 8 p.m. is more likely scenario. You might consider finding a hotel close to Milano Centrale, get your bearings/good night sleep, explore a little in the a.m., and head to Varenna in the morning.

Thanks for the great advise. Sounds like you may have made this trip before. Do you have a suggestion of a hotel close to Milano Centrale

We stayed in Hotel Charly in 2004. It is close to that station (about 5 blocks away) Spend as little time in Milan as possible

Being settled in your Varenna hotel and not having to relocate after one night sounds like a good trade off against one additional hour of travel. I think you should seriously consider going straight there. If your flight is on time, you should be able to catch the 5:00 train and be in Varenna shortly after 6:00.

If you decide to stay in Milan, I would also recommend Hotel Charly. It's near the train station. We stayed there in 2003 and really liked it.

We did do the fly to Milan airport, bus to Milan train station, and train to Varenna, but we barely caught our train. We had to buy train tickets once we got to the train station and the lines were so long we were going to miss the next train. So we decided to try the vending machines that sell tickets instead - there was no line for those. Our Italian language skills were good enough to figure out what to do, so we got the tickets and RAN to catch the train. We made it onboard but forgot to punch our tickets before we boarded. Fortunately the conductor was in our car so we did what a bunch of students were doing. We went up to him and told him we had just barely caught the train and would he please punch our tickets. Saved us a HUGE potential fine.

Thanks, for making a good point. We are now arriving in Milan at 9:00am. That should give us plenty of time to get to Varenna. :)

Carol,

I agree about watching the spelling and pronunciation in a foreign country. I would walk up to the counter and give the city name. They would look at me like I was nuts. Repeating would not help so I would write it down and hand them the paper. They would say "Ahh ". It would sound EXACTLY like I said it but obviously not. So always have pen and paper handy and write down destination and time (in 24 hour clock).