Around Town in Menaggio

We are enjoying the slow life in this beautiful town. Menaggio gets its fair share of tourist traffic in summer, but it is less well known than Bellagio and Varenna so it seems a bit quieter and more peaceful, especially as we get further into September.

Just off the main town square is the lane of Via Calvi, with shops, bistros, and the small but very pretty church of St. Marta tucked in between the buildings.

Looking up Via Calvi in the other direction, it leads directly to the larger church of St. Stefano with its very recognizable bell tower (campanile). These two churches are very close together, and both bell towers seem to be in competition throughout the day to sound off the time. We can't quite figure out the schedule because sometimes they go off on the hour or half hour, other times one will ring a seemingly random number of minutes before or after. Often the number of chimes does not actually match the time of day. It'll be 3pm and we hear not 3, not a military fifteen, but twenty or more chimes...we can't really make sense of it. But we do know that one of the two church towers gleefully plays an agressively loud and long "song" at 7:30 am each morning. Rise and shine!

Greater Menaggio has three hamlets -- Nobiallo, Croce, and Loveno -- that you can easily walk to from the main town. Nobiallo is probably the easiest to get to, since it's just north along a relatively flat path that follows the lakeshore. A bigger challenge is getting up the hill to Croce. We downloaded a guide from the Menaggio tourism office and set off on Saturday morning before the day got too hot. The hike starts with a pretty steep incline up a little path into a forested section of the hillside. From here you get some really great views of Menaggio below.

Even though summer is fading, there were still quite a few wildflowers growing by the side of the path. We even saw some bright pink cyclamen flowers growing wild, which I have never seen outside of a nursery back home. Other late-blooming plants were still attracting plenty of butterflies. This one (Argynnis paphia, I think) actually held still long enough for me to get a photo.

The path to Croce winds its way up an old mule track, and past a little chapel dedicated to the Madonna del Caravaggio. Little shrines like this one seem to be around every corner as you walk through the villages around the lake; these shrines and the regular chiming of the bells serve as constant reminders of the strong faith shared by the Italian people. 

We finally reached the center of the small village of Croce. Like all towns here, there was a pretty central square.

It was a very small hamlet, but we still managed to get a little bit turned around and wandered through some of the small lanes looking for the next point of interest on our walking guide.

We eventually managed to find our way out of the town and followed a very pleasant cycling path along a stream for a bit.

We could hear the tinkling of bells off in the trees and on closer inspection saw a small herd of goats just wandering the hills, unattended.

From there we rejoined the old railway line that has been turned into a bike path and headed back into town. We had enough time to clean up and relax a bit at the apartment before heading down to have dinner and listen to an evening jazz concert. Salute!