Orta San Giulio to Varenna

The train station for Orta San Giulio is actually Orta-Miasino and is located about a mile from Orta San Giulio.

Are you ending up there on a Village Italy tour? The one couple on our tour who wound up taking a train from there took a taxi to the station. At that station (according to our RS guide) you do not have the capability of buying a ticket so you will have to obtain a train ticket before you get there. If you are on a RS tour the guide will work with everyone on exit strategies.

I realize that you asked for recommendations other than hotels, but we stayed at Hotel Villa Cipressi in Varenna and loved it! Wonderful staff; clean comfortable rooms and beautiful views. We walked everywhere in Varenna. Be aware that train tickets may not be purchased at the station in Varenna, you will need to have them before you leave the village. Varenna was one of our favorite stops on our 17 days in Italy.

Thank you - this is reassuring. Yes, we are taking the villages tour and thought Varenna would be a great last stop, assuming it is not too busy or too rainy/cold in late September or mid October. The hotel does sound lovely - we are open to other options in case reservations become scarce by the time we book.

You can actually get train tickets in Varenna, but not at the actual station. There is a travel agency on the walk into town that sells tickets which is where I got them in October when I was there. It is right next door to the Rick recommended Hotel Berretta.

For these regional trains, Trenitalia sells online tickets from maximum one week in advance. My first choice would be to buy them at the Padova train station at the start your trip, in which case they won't have dates on them, but you stamp them in the validation box before entering the train tracks.

I hope you enjoy the Village Italy tour as much as I did! We (me, brother and SIL) stayed an extra night in Orta, which I would not do again. We were finished there by noon and could have gone on to Milan that afternoon. We did enjoy walking the Sacra Monte in Orta which we were done with by noon. It was also raining buckets by later in the afternoon. We also had the best gelato there! In mid Oct we had pear and green apple from the gelato shop on the square across from the boat docks. We did wind up taking a taxi in to Milan with another couple, so 5 of us from the tour split the fee.

As I said, your guide will probably start working on exit strategies for everyone on the tour on about Day 3 so you will not have to figure it out on your own.