BOI - Lake Como Hotel & Ferry Tips

We took a ferry from Varenna to Bellagio some years ago (we were staying in Bergamo, not on an RS tour) and didn't find it difficult. I'm sure you get helpful guidance from your tour leader. :O)

Authors of the two highlighted alum scrapbooks of the 2025 BOI 17-day tour mentioned that their hotels were in Lecco.
https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/scrapbooks/tour-alum-scrapbooks

If I was to venture a guess, Varenna's rise in popularity and crowds (especially of instagrammers), reported increase in hotel rates, and limited inventory of rooms (it's not a big town) may very well be why the tour is staying elsewhere 'near' the lake, as stated in the itinerary. Just one thread regarding rates in Varenna.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/hotel-in-varenna-be3aa206-1c5a-45f2-bfc6-78e7fe504ed3

And the crowds; Malgrate may be more enjoyable! :O)
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/is-lake-como-getting-crowded-like-the-ct-and-ac

Not to worry; I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time in lovely Italy!

Suspect it was a 'no room at the inn' situation with Varenna.

Perhaps take the 90 minute ferry ride one way and take the train the other way. It looks to be a 22 minute train ride between Lecco and Varenna.
I would probably look at taking the ferry in the AM to Bellagio and plan to end in Varenna and take the train back to Lecco

Had no problem with using the ferry when we were there ( pre-covid)

It's a great tour, ENJOY

Lecco has a ferry stop. No need to head to Varenna for a ferry to get to Bellagio or other parts of the Lake.

https://www.navigazionelaghi.it/en/tickets-and-timetables-lake-como/

Right. Take a ferry from Lecco. We only took one from Varenna as we wanted a peek at the town before heading off to Bellagio.

You aren't missing anything by not staying in Varenna. We stayed in Varenna (our first RS tour was BOI) and it was nice, but there really wasn't anything about it that would say "stay here instead of a different town on the lake". I'm sure that whereever you stay on the lake you will have easy access to the ferry.

Wow, you must be very excited about the upcoming trip! I envy you getting to go on BOI: that was our first RS trip and so it's my favorite. Some great places you'll be seeing. Feel free to ask if you have any questions (though BOI was about 11 years ago!)

Tony

Hopefully your tour guide will start you guys out at Villa Balbianello near Lenno. That will help get you oriented on the ferry system. Our tour was 10 years ago but still ranks #1 in the 9 we’ve taken. Then there’s the Villa Carlotta not too far from Lenno. I agree that while Varenna is nice and that’s where we stayed, I bet there are other equally great towns to stay in. Have so much fun Katy!

Would you be so kind as to say the hotel in Malgate as we are on the BOI Sep 6 to 22 and we may well be staying here as well. Many thanks.

Thanks for all the info everyone. We're really excited for this tour! Maureen, to answer your question about the hotel in Malgrate, it's the Hotel Promessi Sposi - looks gorgeous. I will say, it's highly possible that your hotel will be different. We've had to book this same trip three times in the past year due to some foot surgeries I had to have. Our first hotel in Venice was different with each booking we made! Maybe that's unique to such a popular destination but maybe don't get too attached to Malgrate :-)

Thanks for hotel info. We will see and I will let you know

I did this tour 2 years ago when it started in the Lake Como area. Our hotel was in Lecco, and our guide took us on a train from Lecco to Varenna, and sorted us out with ferry tickets from there. Lecco had a ferry to Varenna, but it was a longer trip and not as regular, so it was easier to take the train to Varenna and use ferries from there. I was disappointed not to be staying in Varenna, too, but it's small (and hilly). Lecco is bigger, so i could see how it made more sense to stay there. Lecco had lovely views - as I'm sure Malgrate will!

The ferries from Varenna were easy to navigate and our guide gave us an orientation on using them before we went off on our own.

We did this tour last year (fabulous BTW) and hotel was in Lecco. For our free day, we got off to a good start as our guide went with us on train to Varenna (I think it was like 25 or 30 min train ride) where you can then take ferries to middle lake villages. I will say that the ferry schedules were challenging to understand and there is not much help from the staff to figure them out.

The mid lake towns were crowded.

Think Disney Spring Break!

Bellagio of course being the worst. It sounds crazy but I personally would not have missed anything by skipping it. Lots of designer shopping which is not our thing. Too many people trying to figure our ferry schedules and an hour wasted in line waiting to be sure we could get on the ferry we needed. Some friends waited 30 minutes to use a toilet. Restaurants and bars were over capacity. To do over again I would maybe try in advance to book a private excursion for a few hours on the lake and have a nice scenic lunch in one of the less popular villages. But that is just us. I actually gave feedback that Rick should consider chartering something for his groups for a few hours, including a nice lunch stop maybe in Varenna. Then those that have had enough can take train back to hotel town.

Once we figured it out we took the direct Bellagio / Lecco ferry to get back to Lecco at the end of the day. That was a little over an hour duration and it was scenic and the least chaotic thing we did all day. Very pleasant way to decompress after the chaos of the afternoon.

In the end, for us, we liked the less crowded pace of Lecco and our hotel was a typical mom and pop place. Not fancy but clean and great breakfast. Hosts seemed genuinely delighted to have us there! There was a major town renovation of what I imagine is now a beautiful new paved lakeside walkway and park like area to give the area a lovely face lift. It seemed like a disappointment at first but turned to be a very positive thing for us!

BOI is a phenomenal experience and even a year later I still look back on the trip as a lifetime dream come true! Jealous of you getting to do it for the first time ! Happy Travels!

Thank you all for your feedback! I thought I'd jump on and give my follow-up report for anyone who looks at this thread in the future and has similar questions.

We loved the stop in Lake Como and per usual, Rick Steves team knows what's up. Staying in Malgrate was peaceful and beautiful - a welcome space away from the tourist crowds. Our hotel (Hotel Promessi Spossi) was four star and super nice! We never made it over to Lecco but the walk over to the heart of town was only about 10-15 minutes along the water. Our tour guide (the amazing Daniela) arranged a small bus for our group directly up to Bellagio the morning of our free day - which turned out to be fantastic. She also went out early to buy all of us our ferry tickets for the day...including a pass back to Lecco from Bellagio ( allowing the option for the ferry back if anyone wanted to not take the bus back later). From where we got dropped off, my husband and I broke off from the group and went directly to the Villa Melzi to tour the gardens there. It was everything you dream of Lake Como being like (the famous Villa Balbianello wasn't open on the day we were there). We would definitely recommend this spot! The towns were very busy but I guess because we expected it, it wasn't a surprise. Varenna was the most crowded because of everyone coming up from Milan on the train, then trying to get a ferry ticket. The line just for tickets went as far as the eye could see! Thankful we already had ours.

When queuing up for the ferry just keep asking people what line they're in. Don't stand there and assume you're in the right spot. Some of our tour mates later shared that they stood in that crazy long ticket line for a while before realizing that they were in the wrong spot. There were typcially multiple ferry options (car or passenger) that could get your around the mid-lake area but you had to know which crowd to join.

Overall, the thing that surprised me the most was that that the lake is much bigger than we expected. The direct ferry back to Lecco still took an hour (according to my tour mates). We elected to splurge for a private boat tour through Bellagio Boat Service (booked it day of when we were walking by) and we got to see so many gorgeous villas by water towards the end of the day. Our boat captain was a great host, telling us lots about what we were seeing. We only wish we could have connected with some tour mates to join us! The boat was plenty big. We added a bottle of prosecco and they threw in lot's of snacks for us too! Getting a Uber/Taxi back to Malgrate from Bellagio wasn't easy but we finally asked a hotel concierge to help us out and made it back!

To sum it up...The ferries aren't too hard but they're also not the easiest either. You definitely want to be aware of when the last ones of the day are running otherwise you could possibly get stuck with having to pay a lot to get back. Just don't be afraid to ask for help. We found most everyone to be so willing to chat and help!