Don’t spend too much time waiting for someone to answer the bell of George Clooney’s $100m eighteenth century L’Oleandre villa on the western shore of Europe’s deepest lake. There are plenty of other places to get a Nespresso.
My wife gave him 20 minutes before shrugging in her shoulders and saying, “He’s probably on location or attending some premiere.”
Milan is busy and noisy all year round. Lake Como is packed out of season and seething in season.
So, they make an ideal short break dual destination. The lake is one hour from easyJet’s hub at Terminal 2, Malpensa Airport and Milan an hour south with fast bus and train connections.
At over 50 square miles, Lake Como has many must-do-must-see landmarks and must-do activities.
Like the lakeside villages of Bellagio and Varenna, the Fontanella (formerly Villa Versace) and elevenies and pastry dainties at George’s. And the K or Kitchen restaurant at Tavernola on the western shore.
The Laglio’s famous Baroque and Neoclassical palazzo villas with their Egyptian sculptures and Roman statuary are all masterpieces. As are all the courses of chef Andrea Casali’s Michelin Star six-course seasonal tasting menu in the grounds of the Sheraton Lake Como.
The area has many walks such as the half an hour one from Lenno along the promenade under the umbrella pines to the Villa del Balbianello. And the 10-kilometrer Greenway Trail from Griante to Colonno.
But both pale in comparison to the two minute walk over the road from The Sheraton hotel to its feted restaurant in its own park with Lebanon cedars, pines and magnolias. Grandiose architecture is quickly forgotten when you taste Casali’s Wagyu and prawn served with either Sakari Junmai Daiginjo No 11 or 100% Schiava Flein Fizz Blanc Sparkling grape juice.
After a day queuing for ferry tickets and gelatos, being barged by the hordes, sidestepping huge trophy dogs, a gastronomic tasting menu leaves you with the same sense of physical and mental regeneration as the hotel’s spa.
A dessert of celeriac, chamomile, beetroot and ice cream leaves you as serene as does a facial from Camilla and her gua sha.
How many four-star hotels can boast a Michelin-starred restaurant?
At the foot of the Alps, the inverted Y-shaped, three-branched Lario, the third-largest lake in Italy after Garda and Maggiore, has been a retreat since Roman times. Como was named Novum Comum by consul Julius Caesar in 59 BC. It is still a silk centre.
The 1990s block housing Sheraton Lake Como with its façade softened by trailing plants is a modern-day “otium” or place of leisure. It may not have water lily ponds, parterres, terraces, azaleas or rhododendrons. And it doesn’t have a sculpture collection. Only a blue whale installation of Nicole Salvatore’s “Un’onda del mare nel Lago di Como” (A wave on the Lake Como Sea) which looks like a pod of dolphins being harpooned in midair. But it does have a terrific restaurant.
Inevitably, the local cucina lariana suffers from over tourism. Sadly, many of the hundreds of local restaurants serve up tasteless hard bread, indifferent dipping olive oil, grey distressed lake fish which might be perch or missoltini (the more romantic Italian name for shad), bland salads, rushed pizzas and gloppy polenta uncia with local melted cheese and butter.
You will struggle to find the guidebooks’ casoeûla (a traditional Lombard pork and cabbage dish).
A luxury spa is a far more relaxing and tranquil place than a crowded Japanese garden or an old orangery full of old orange Russians. Visiting the Sheraton Lake Como spa far surpasses visiting a palatial villa owned by the first Italian to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The view from its swimming pool is better than the view from a lakeside loggia shared with a bus load of noisy school children.
The “sopracciglia” eyebow treatment, luxury pedicure, a €250 110-minute Magnolia Dream or Longevioty Re-Birth, some Insium Booster Complex and cryo-therapeutic ice globes are far more exhilarating than a bumpy ride on wooden Riva Aquarama or V engine Riva Super Tritone, buffeted by the Breva, Tivan and Revulton winds.
My wife is one of those travellers who prefers nail studios to the Baroque. And prioritises her upper lip above culture. I associate my stomach with culture.
Three miles south of Como and near George’s, the Sheraton Lake Como may not be quite on the lakefront, but it offers bedrooms with mountain and pool views. It is a refuge from the crowds.
When in Milan you don’t have to have a glass of Aloissi Portofino Bisson as your vino dell ‘antipasto, a Fiano di Avellino Guido Marsella with you stewed snails and black garlic risotto or a sommelier-selected Pouilly Fume Baron de a Doucette as your vino del dessert.
Instead, you can do what an increasing amount of Milanese as Italians do and have a bespoke cocktail in the form of a professionally curated Basil Smash, Matcha MITO, Coffee Highball White Lady or Virgin Negroni. In that order to complement what you are eating.
The 310-room luxury Liberty-style Art Nouveau Principe di Savoia, overlooking Milan’s Piazza della Repubblica, offers tasting menus with alcoholic (premium and whatever the category is fractionally below premium) as well non-alcoholic mocktail pairings created by the sommelier Massimiliano and bar manager and head mixologist Daniela Celli, whose lo-no speciality aperitivo in the Thierry Despont designed glass-domed bar is a Garden Gimlet.
The Principe, formerly Hotel du Nord et Des Anglais is now part of the prestigious Dorchester Collection. Treat yourself. Milan will get to you otherwise.
The Principe is renowned for its five-star luxury and old world grandeur that includes 5,000 crystal chandeliers, cherubs and putti on their ceilings, mosaics in the bathrooms, Treviso marquetry, premium Italian marble flooring and Presidential Suites with private Pompei-style swimming pools and faux leopard skin throne chairs, as well as fin de siecle furnishings, silks, thick damask, Stefan Rocci outlets, Sommier Permaflex Elite model beds, Vspring mattresses, limited edition Frette bed linen, Tebo pillows, rotating art works, caped doormen with impressively loud taxi-attracting whistles and 250 window boxes on their neo classical façade. As well as the chance of having a pasta named after them.
Pavarotti and Maria Callas ate and stayed at the hotel when performing at the nearby La Scala Opera House (a box costs 600 euros per person) and have dishes in their honor – Penna alla Pavarotti and Penna alla Norma.
The hotel must be the only one in the world boasting a Pasta Library. Modesto, the charming concierge, provided explicit directions. “Floor one by the toilets!”
It is a framed glass cabinet containing pasta shapes from “farfalle” butterflies and bowties, tiny “orzo” (barley broth and soup pasta), elbows, tubes with and without ridges, corkscrews, fettucine ribbons and angel hair.
It is a shrine to superior, high-quality, Executive Chef grade, slow-dried bronze-cut durum wheat semolina famous for its porosity and sauce-capturing capabilities. The Cecco goes back to 1886 and is still based at Fara San Martino in the Abruzzo region.
Lombardy is the birthplace of gnocchi, derived from the Italian for knuckle or knot of wood. Potato was cheaper than milled wheat.
You have to find out all this yourself as the library has no visible librarian or audio guides. However, it has far less queues than Di Vinci’s Last Supper on the refectory wall of Milan’s Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in the Muse del Cenacolo. And Giuseppe Permarini’s 1776-8 La Scala.
The 1927 hotel’s original USP was being “within a horse-drawn carriage ride of the opera house”. The opera theme is constant throughout. From its sculpted swag curtained entrance hallway designed by Turin-based company Ci.Ti.Elle Srl and bedrooms with framed original programmes and sheet music. My room was very Wagnerian.
The Principe’s 10th floor Club 21 spa and Technogym boast the most dramatic warm-down area, namely a wraparound terrace looking out over the city’s Porta Nuova district. The hotel is 30 minutes from the Duomo Cathedral, 10 minutes from the Brera artistic district and a little less from Milan Centrale railway station. The hotel offers a shuttle service every 20 minutes to and from the city centre.
The Mosaic rooms by Francesca Basu include theatrical-sized, noise-absorbing dress swag curtains. Draw your curtain in the morning and the world becomes your stage. The whole hotel is a performance with various acts and none more so than dinner in the Acanto Restaurant as orchestrated by Matteo Gabrielli and his sommelier.
It is a well-oiled ensemble that hits all the right notes every time. A long weekend in Milan and Lake Como is enough unless you are a hiker, shopper and can get tickets for the San Siro, the opera and the Last Supper fresco or George and Amal invite you for a sleepover and a few laps of the lake on any or all of his vintage motorbikes.
For more information on what to see and do in Lombardy, please visit: www.in-lombardia.it and on getting to Lake Como, please visit: www.easyjet.com.
Author Bio:
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, food and drink work appear worldwide, and he has been published in over 800 titles.
Photographs courtesy of Sheraton Lake Como Hotel
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