I've read parking is a bear in Varenna and/or expensive (e.g., the public lot). Whats been your experience? We'll be there over a weekend (starting on a Saturday the very last week in August and staying until mid week in the first week of September). Is parking at the station a pain, ie are there extremely limited spots? Due to the nature of our trip and other destinations, a car is looking to be more convenient than the train.
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area (USA)
16240 posts
There is a multistory carpark (aka the "auto-silo") that opened 3 years ago. It' s been controversial because of the high prices (I think they charge €2/hr up to €15/day). If you want to look it up on Google Street view, enter Via IV Novembre, 17, Varenna.
The map below shows that parking (auto-silo), plus others, including the station which is smaller. I've read in local newspapers online that Varenna has no free parking, so get ready to shell out some money, one way or another. If you want to park at the station, I haven't been to Varenna in many years, but from the Google Maps satellite picture I can see that the parking lot stalls at the station have blue stripes, which in Italian means "meter pay parking". There will be an automatic machine there where you can pay for the ticket to place on the dash board. However I don't know if there are time limits on the parking time you can purchase. You might have to feed the machine and get a new ticket for the dashboard every few hours (or hopefully just every 24 hours).
http://www.varenna.net/Various/CARTINA_VARENNA12.pdf
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA
7737 posts
Do you need a car for the entire trip? Or can you drop it off before or pick it up after Varenna?
Posted by
OP
Kansas City
462 posts
Thanks Roberto! As always you're a wealth of information about Italy.
Posted by
2 posts
We spent 2 nights in Varenna at the end of May and stayed at the Hotel Villa Cipressi (recommended). We parked on the road heading south from the town for free. There were about 40 unrestricted spaces along the lake side of the road and we were able to find one open. Just make sure there are no signs indicating special events or street cleaning times.