Walking the Antica Strada Regina - Lake Como
For our second day on Lake Como, we decided to do something a little different. A small side bar in my Lonely Planet guide, describing a walk on an ancient roman road called the Antica Strada Regina, caught my eye. LP recommended getting more info from the tourist office in Menaggio, but I never located it, so that wasn’t super helpful. Fortunately, I found this excellent pdf description of the trail, which was SUPER helpful and very descriptive.
If you enjoy hiking and lake views, this is a great option during a trip to Lake Como. I didn’t plan too far in advance on this one, but what I read told me this trail was 7 km long and would take about 3 hours, but I have to say, it felt longer than that, the really steep climb and subsequent ups and downs was probably part of that.
The accessible portion of the trail goes from Menaggio to Rezzonico, so to start we took the ferry from Varenna to Menaggio. The trail starts at the north end of Menaggio, just before the small town of Nobiallo.
From Nobiallo, the trail climbs quickly and steeply into the hills above the lake, going from cobblestone road to grassy path.
Conveniently and fortunately, as we were getting quite hungry, just around lunch time we entered the town of Acquaseria and located Da Luigi for some rest.
Continuing north after our lunch stop we walked through Santa Maria past backyards and gardens, and this is the only place we got slightly lost. We lost the path, but eventually found it again.
As it started to get cloudier, we finally walked into Rezzonico. It’s a little place, not on the main tourist trail, with a castle that is not open to the public, and cobblestone streets leading down to the lake. We wandered briefly and then headed up hill to the main road and the bus stop, as it started to rain. I could not read the schedule, but figured the bus would come eventually (unless it was Sunday, I think it said that it didn’t run on Sundays). And eventually the bus did show up and drove us back to Menaggio in an absolute downpour.
Back in the piazza in Menaggio, the rain tapered off and it was gelato time!
