What the Lake Como Travel Guide Book Actually Gets Right (And Where It Falls Apart)
I bought three different guidebooks before my first trip to Como in 2019. Two of them were fine. The third one—the one I kept using until it fell apart at the spine—was the Lake Como Travel Guide Book published by Bradt. It wasn't the flashiest one on the shelf, but it was the only one that didn't try to sell me on Varenna as a hidden gem when I already knew exactly where I wanted to sleep. The thing most people miss about this book is that it was written by an expat who actually lived on the lake for eight years. That shows up in the ferry schedule sections. The author doesn't just paste the July timetable; she includes a sidebar about which boats run less frequently in winter, which stops get skipped on Monday mornings, and how the 6:47 PM return from Cernobbio disappears entirely after September. I've seen travelers stand on docks at night waiting for a boat that runs only four days a week because some other guidebook silently dropped that detail. Don't be that person.
Lake Como Travel Guide Book: A Practical Breakdown
Here's how the book is structured. It opens with a chapter on getting there that covers train routes from Milan Centrale, the Malpensa Express connection, and the bus from Bergamo airport that nobody mentions because it only runs every two hours. Then it moves into the towns chapter, which is organized geographically from the southern tip northward. Bellagio comes early. Menaggio and Gravedona get their own sections. The lesser-known spots—Moltrasio, Ossuccio, Nesso—get a paragraph each with the actual address of the small church that has a Tiepolo fresco in it, which is the kind of detail you won't find on TripAdvisor. The restaurant listings are the part that gets people talking. Some of them are accurate. Some aren't. I've had lunch at two places the book recommended that were still open and excellent, and one that had closed two years before the printing date. The book's last edition came out in 2021, which means anything that changed during the pandemic sits in a gray zone. The author notes this in the preface, but it's easy to gloss over. My workaround is to cross-reference with recent Google Maps reviews filtered by date, not just star rating. A place with 4.2 stars from last month is more reliable than a 4.6 from 2019. There's a ferry pass section that explains the Lake Como transport card in decent detail. The card costs around €21 for a day and covers all the public boats on the main route. But here's the nuance the book doesn't emphasize enough: the day pass only works on the standard Circumlacustre route, not on the faster high-speed ferries between Como and Lecco. If you're doing a point-to-point trip across the northern end of the lake, you'll pay extra. I learned that the hard way in August 2022, standing on a dock in Menaggio watching a high-speed boat leave without me because I'd bought the wrong ticket type.
The walking route chapter is where this book separates itself from the mass-market guides. There's a detailed section on the Sentiero del Viandante, the old mule path that runs along the eastern shore from Menaggio to Gravedona. The book gives elevation data, water source locations, and approximate walking times between trail markers. I've done this walk in late October, when most of the summer crowds had left, and the trail conditions were exactly as described—well-maintained stone steps, occasional mud near the stream crossings, no cell signal for about three kilometers past San Siro. The book also flags that the southern section near Menaggio has a dangerous cliff-side stretch that gets washed out in heavy rain. I took that shortcut once. Didn't do it again.
Get the Full Details
Where the Book Needs You to Fill In the Blanks
The accommodation section lists prices from the 2020–2021 period. Current rates are likely 15 to 30 percent higher depending on the town and season. A B&B in Bellagio that listed at €90 per night in the book will probably run €110 to €130 now. The book does include a general price index at the back, which helps, but it's not granular enough for booking decisions. I keep a separate spreadsheet with current rates I've found through direct hotel inquiries, since many smaller properties in Como don't appear on Booking.com and require phone or email contact. The seasonal timing guidance is solid. The book correctly identifies May and early June as the sweet spot—warm enough for swimming, before the peak crowds arrive, with reasonable availability. It also warns about August, when the lake gets packed and accommodation prices spike. What it doesn't cover adequately is the October through April window, when many restaurants and shops close for extended periods. If you're traveling in winter, the book's advice becomes less useful. The ferry schedules shift dramatically, and the author's recommendations for village exploration assume a level of services that simply don't exist outside the tourist season. There's a useful section on day trips to Bellagio, Varenna, and Porlezza, but it underplays how much time the actual ferry ride consumes. The book lists distances in kilometers but doesn't always translate that into real clock time including wait periods. A ferry from Como to Bellagio takes roughly 75 minutes with a stop at Varenna en route. People reading the book sometimes plan to visit both towns in one day without accounting for the full transit time, then get frustrated when they've spent half the day on a boat instead of exploring. I've given this warning to other travelers at hostels. It's the same advice every time.
Using the Lake Como Travel Guide Book Alongside Digital Tools
The book works best when you treat it as a foundation, not a complete system. I use it alongside the official Lake Como ferry timetable app, which updates in real time and shows current delays. The book's narrative descriptions of towns are better than anything in the app, but the app's schedule data is current. I also keep Google Maps open for restaurant hours, since the book's listings can't reflect temporary closures or seasonal changes. For the ferry section specifically, there's a useful tip the book implies but doesn't state explicitly: buying a return ticket at the same time as the outbound ticket locks in your return price and guarantees a spot on that boat. On busy summer weekends, walk-on passengers sometimes get turned away from the last departure because the boat is full. Having a paper ticket in your hand changes how the crew treats you at the gangplank. I carry my Bradt guide in a waterproof document sleeve and reference it on the boat. The pages hold up better than you'd expect in that environment. The book's appendix on emergency contacts is worth checking before you leave the airport. It lists the local hospital in Como, the Carabinieri number, and the tourist information office in Bellagio. These numbers don't change frequently, which is rare for a travel guide. Most of the contact information in the book remains valid years after publication, which is why I keep reusing this edition rather than buying the next one.
If you're planning a trip and want something more current on pricing and restaurant openings, the Italian travel forum Il Forum di Viaggio has active threads about Como that get updated weekly. The forum isn't English-friendly for everyone, but the ferry schedule threads have enough translation help from other travelers to be useful. I pull from that when the book's information feels stale on anything price-related. The Lake Como Travel Guide Book isn't perfect. It has gaps where the world moved faster than print publishing. But for understanding the actual geography of the lake, the ferry system, and which towns deserve more than a hour-long stop, it's still the most reliable single-volume resource I've found. I've recommended it to at least a dozen people over the past few years, and the ones who used it seriously had better trips than the ones who relied on algorithm-driven itinerary apps.
