Arriving In Lake Como, Learning The Language, and The Laziest Jazz Band In All Of Italy

European Vacation Day 1

PREFACE

Wow. It has been a while! Over two months, as a matter of fact. Before getting into today’s post, let me provide a bit of brief context as to why Toilet Read came to such a screeching halt. Long story short— after 476 consecutive days of posting a brand new comedic newsletter, I missed a day because I had one-too-many PBR and whiskey shot combos at a bar and fell asleep without posting. I then took a break because I deserved it. Now I will be back on a less regular, but hopefully still-frequent basis. Any questions? Did you miss me? Okay, now for today’s post.

---

It is 5 o’clock in the morning on the second day of my European vacation of 2023. I forgot to write about what we did last night and I couldn’t fall back asleep after waking up at 3am so I have decided to just write about it now.

To preface, let’s familiarize ourselves with the characters on this trip. For starters, there is Eric Bohrer, my best buddy and soon-to-be law school student. This trip is a last hoorah for the two of us before we go our separate ways and never speak to each other again. Eric’s two younger siblings are also here which is a lot of fun. Craig Bohrer, Arizona High School State Champion baseball star, was on the flight yesterday afternoon with Eric and me. Stephanie Bohrer, social media icon and avid Taylor Swift supporter, just wrapped up the Greek leg of her trip and met Craig, Eric, and myself in our first destination of Lake Como, Italy. Craig and Stephanie each also have a friend here. Stephanie’s friend is Zoey and Craig’s friend is Nate. More information to come about the two of them as I learn it myself. After we leave Lake Como, we will be joined by Rory McDermott, longtime friend of me and Eric, for the remainder of our adventure.

Okay, now that we’ve covered that let’s dive into the events of the past 36 hours, give or take (time zones confuse me greatly and I’m running on very little sleep, so I’m truthfully not too sure how many hours have elapsed since this story begins). 

On June 27th, whenever that was relative to now, I scooted out of work early and Ubered to the always-entertaining Port Authority Bus Terminal. There I met up with Eric and Craig. The three of us then split a taxi to JFK airport. We got through security pretty seamlessly, I wrapped up some loose ends at work, and then we ate a large amount of Buffalo Wild Wings, the perfect meal to precede and eight hour transatlantic journey. The flight was smooth and fairly uneventful; I watched Whiplash with Miles Teller for the first time (4.1 / 5 stars), slept for a couple of hours, and before I knew it we had arrived in Milan. We then took the train to Milan Central Station before sprinting in order to make our connecting train to Lake Como. The second train, as we perhaps should have imagined on a beautiful June day in one of the most popular vacation destinations in the world, was rather crowded. One incredibly sweaty man maneuvered his way around me, Eric, and Craig about five too many times, each journey to the other side of the car being more unbelievable, irksome, and hilarious than the last. 

The train ride, besides that, was beautiful. Many of the travelers got off in a town at the southeast tip of the lake called Lecco. As a result, some window seats opened up and the three of us enjoyed taking in the sights for the next half an hour until we arrived in Varenna, where our hotel is located. The hotel offered a complimentary ride from the train station and, despite some initial protest during the planning stage from me, we accepted it. And frankly, thank goodness we did. Varenna, and I assume many of the surrounding towns in Lake Como, is incredibly hilly and oftentimes difficult to traverse. Rita, a smiley, short-haired, 70-something-year-old hotel staffer, was our driver. She didn’t speak much English but joked around a few times about wanting to barrel into the large crowd of tourists that was clogging the street coming off of the train. “Strike,” she said (in jest, I hope), more than once, along with some rather aggressive hand motions towards our fellow tourists. 

When we got to the hotel, we said a quick hello to Stephanie and Zoey, who had the pleasure of meeting lovely Rita the night before, and went to the “lobby” (using this term fairly loosely. This hotel is more like a collection of home-like structures and the lobby is no more than a small room in one of these home-like structures perched up on this big mountain) in order to show Rita our passports and things like that. When we returned, we got changed, did a fit check for Stephanie’s vlog, and then walked down the steep, mile-long path towards the town of Varenna. 

The downtown area was incredibly idyllic, as I was sort of imagining a town on the banks of Lake Como to be. The shops and homes were all painted nice shades of yellow and orange and pink, wooden boats ferried around honeymooning couples, and people said things like “ciao” and “buongiorno” when they passed us. Okay, you caught me; that last part was a lie. Truthfully I was the one saying ciao and buongiorno to everyone that we came across. For whatever reason, I’m really enjoying attempting to speak Italian to both fellow tourists and local Lake Como-ers. I don’t think that they enjoy it very much, but it’s my vacation so I don’t really give a fuck what they enjoy.

Eric, Craig, Stephanie, Zoey, and I familiarized ourselves with Varenna for a few hours while we waited for Craig’s friend Nate, whose plane was delayed, to come meet us there. We enjoyed some cold drinks and a cheese board (that turned out to be far more meat-heavy than cheese-heavy) at a lakeside restaurant called Bar Il Molo. 

When Nate met up with us, we continued our walking tour of the Varenna, checking out some old churches, taking some incredibly aesthetically pleasing pictures, and enjoying our first (and certainly not last) gelato of the trip. We then walked to Villa Monastero, a museum and garden along Lake Como that came highly recommended to us. The views were nothing short of spectacular, and the six of us very thoroughly enjoyed putzing around, taking pictures, and getting to know one another a little bit better. Eric and I, out of sheer obligation and nothing more, sipped on a shot of espresso at a cafe inside the grounds of the villa. I don’t like coffee, but I needed the energy and, perhaps even more so, craved the experience. 

After leaving the villa, we sat for a few minutes to regroup before returning to Bar Il Molo for an early dinner. The dinner was so early, in fact, that after we ordered some wine for the table, we were completely ignored by all of the wait staff for about an hour because they probably didn’t even process that dinner could be eaten so early (for context, it was around 6:00pm). We ordered pastas and pizzas, drank cheap, local wine, and shared a couple orders of tiramisu for dessert. 

During dinner, a band consisting of a keyboard player, guitarist, stand up bassist, and trumpet player, set up shop near our table. We were excited to be serenaded by them but, much like the wait staff at our restaurant, they were in no real rush, taking about 30 minutes to tune their instruments and sound-check, only to play one singular song before sitting down at the bar for a well-deserved drink after such an arduous four minute performance.

After we left Bar Il Molo, we started our literal hike back up the mountain towards our hotel. The trek was only about a mile long, but had an average gradient of 10% (trust me; I calculated it when we got home) making it quite a difficult journey after a long day of traveling and adventuring. Despite the challenge, all six of us managed to make it back to our hotel, where we rewarded ourself with a refreshing dip in the small outdoor pool located near our room. In order to reach the pool, we had to pass the hotel’s outdoor restaurant, where we said “ciao” and all of the other Italian phrases that we’d been working on throughout the afternoon. Then our old friend, Rita, came to scold us (specifically the women in our group) for walking through the restaurant in our bathing suits. We didn’t really love this too interaction too much (escpecially considering the fact that Stephanie and Zoey saw a naked man near the pool yesterday, which seems a bit more offensive than walking past a restaurant in a towel), but had a great time joking about it after the fact. 

After the pool, we all returned to our home base, played a few card games, drank a bit more wine, and retired for the night. It was, to say the least, a lovely start to the trip. 

Note:

If you’ve made it this far, kudos and thank you! Now for a bit of a tangent. When I was 13 years old, my Grandma Liz and Grandpa Joe brought me and my cousin Abby to Italy as a spectacularly generous gift for our respective bar and bat mitzvahs. Along with them they brought us each a notebook that they encouraged us to write in at the end of every day. Last month, after my Grandpa Joe passed away, I read some of the entries that I wrote in the journal. Many of them read things like “Today was fun. I ate gelato. I ate pizza. I saw the Colosseum. It was so cool and big. Etc Etc.” Despite the lack of literary flare that I had back then, I understand why my grandparents gave me and Abby those notebooks. I have really enjoyed writing about my travels throughout the past few years. I find that reflecting on these adventures as they are unfolding is a great way for me to remember certain fun details that might otherwise be lost as well as have more gratitude for both the spectacular as well as the mundane things that I am lucky enough to be experiencing. On this trip, and hopefully all big trips that I take in the future, therefore, I hope to continue this tradition, both for my well-traveled and deeply-missed grandparents, as well as for myself.

Thanks for reading and, service permitting, I’ll try to continue posting throughout this journey (probably less detailed than today’s entry, but who knows).