Varenna's main "sight" is the ruined medieval castle nearby. Sure, it looks innocuous enough, a typical look with ladies dressed in gowns and men dressed in tights. Sometimes things so strange happen they merit their own story. By the time we left the Castle of Vezio on the top of the hill in Varenna, I was legitimately laughing out of sheer confusion.
We started making the trek up the hill both expecting sensational views of Lake Como. It was a much longer, steeper trek than we expected. You might notice the sign says 15 minutes on foot. That is a lie. it's more like 30 - 35, straight uphill on a little cobblestone path/stairs.
I didn't think it was too bad.
Ali disagreed.
She was willing to take another (happy) picture after a few minutes rest.
When we arrived at the top, we weren't disappointed. Various parts of the grounds had views of the lake from every angle just as the sun was setting.
But things felt like they might be a little bit off. At the entrance to the grounds, there was an owl. I'm still not sure why. An unofficial mascot perhaps?
Alas, while expansive views of what some people have called the most beautiful place on Earth should be enough to attract hordes of tourists, the real draw for most people appears to be the Castle's daily falconry exhibits.
Ali was extremely intrigued by the "falconer's" exhibition...until she realized she didn't speak Italian and had no idea what the guy was saying. This guy kept just picking up one of the 10ish birds, unhooking them, saying something about them, then disappearing down the hill only to return without the bird. It was slightly confusing. I think at some point they were supposed to return back after he called them...or something like that. The Italian tourists were enthralled and completely oblivious to the views all around them. The big falcon kept jumping in my direction in a very threatening/sad manner - he was tied by both feet to the ground with about 2 1/2 feet of chain.
After we realized it would be a while before the hawks returned and potentially did something unpredictable or dangerous, we decided to climb the tower that still rests in the middle of the castle. The views from the top were perhaps the best of the day.
And they gave us a chance to take a timed-photograph of ourselves with the phone dangling from a screw in the wall. Nobody was around to take our picture because falconry was still going on.
But of course, the castle wouldn't be complete with just pretty views. To keep things interesting, the climb was on a series of barely stable wooden steps that led Ali to legitimately fear for her life.
And of course, what tower in the middle of a castle famous for falconry exhibits would be complete without a fossil museum to educate the public about the lariosauro?
That was just hanging in one of the rooms in the tower. The website tells me that the lariosauro is "a middle-sized fossil reptile genus ascribed to the Saupterigians, an extinct group of aquatic reptiles." However, the website doesn't tell me exactly why there is a museum for it in a tower in a castle on the top of a hill. Perhaps it was found in the castle? Perhaps it once ruled over the town from the castle with an iron fist? Maybe the falcons were bred to defeat the lariosauro? It is all a mystery. Once you got into the castle, there were no descriptions of anything.
All this was enough to leave me confused and amused. But the castle was put over the top by the random art exhibition which involved plaster molds of human and ghost like figures all over the castle.
I really can't do justice to the weirdness of the whole thing. Especially considering the views alone were worth the admission. It's like getting a falconry show, fossil museum, and postmodern paper-machet exhibit for free!
Alas, then it was time to leave.
The castle is the castle-like icon in the middle of the map above. We came up by taking the path on the left which was by no means a road, but was wide and filled with steps. We decided to take the other road down the hill. The one that leaves the castle on the right. The one that looks like all the other roads on the map. After spending about 20 minutes looking for said road, we realized we had found it.
The "road" on the map is in fact an 8 inch wide path barely big enough for one person worn through plants and weeds and occasionally passing through what appeared to be people's backyards.
Fortunately the view was worth it. The way down was steeper than the way up had been, and significantly more difficult. We traipsed down tall steps, around what I was sure was poison ivy, past random shrines to the Virgin Mary, through a terraced olive grove, finally ending up at a random hotel that had a funicular and a killer view. We ended the day checking out the monastery gardens and villa described in the last post.
Overall, I give it two thumbs up. If you go to Varenna and don't go see the prehistoric dinosaur fossil, falconry, art exhibit Renaissance castle, you really haven't been to Varenna at all.
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