Luxury in Lake Como: Our Stay at Villa Serbelloni

I’ve never been much of a “stay at a resort and never leave” kind of traveler. If you’ve read any of my other travel posts, you know that I love full days with lots of variety. However, daily life has been so full with moving and working and keeping up with our two year old, that my husband and I decided we wanted to pair a more relaxed part of our trip with our recent stay in Paris.

If you’re interested in other destinations, check out my guides to

• 4 Art and Food Filled Days in Paris
• A Cultural Guide to Tokyo, Hakone, & Kyoto
• Italy: Solo Female Itinerary: Rome, Venice, Trieste and An Art Lover’s Guide to Italy: Florence and Rome)
• A Museum Lover’s Guide to Amsterdam
• A Romantic Guide to Lisbon & The Algarve
• A History Lover’s Guide to London

Enter: Lake Como. Lake Como promises stunning scenery and luxury, so we thought it would be the perfect place to spend 4 nights after Paris. Before our trip, I expected this recap post to be about the activities and restaurants we visited, but it turns out that this is going to be an ode to the villa where we stayed.

We flew from Paris to Milan (easy), took two trains to get to Lake Como (also easy, but ended up running a bit to make a close connection rather than wait), and planned to take a ferry to Bellagio where we were staying. Well, when we got off of the train and made our way to the water there was a line of at least 200 people waiting to buy tickets to get on the ferry. We quickly pivoted, took the train back to Lecco and took at taxi to Bellagio.

We quickly learned that getting around via ferry was not going to be for us because our time felt too precious to spend standing in line. This meant that all of my planned activities (hikes! villa visits!) were going to be forfeited.

You may be thinking, “Alyssa, I’m sure you still explored the food scene in Bellagio in the areas where you could walk.” You’d be wrong. One meal in town was enough for me. So what did we do for our 4 days? We stayed at Villa Serbelloni and never wanted to leave.

This hotel was unlike any place I’ve stayed before. It was opulent and luxurious. It had a private beach and pool and tennis courts and gardens and a dock and a Michelin star restaurant (more on that later). It was more than enough to keep us occupied and the gorgeous, late May weather meant that we were outside all day.

We lounged at the beach, swam in the lake, hopped in the pool, and read to our hearts’s content. I was able to think and write uninterrupted and it felt like the biggest luxury of all. We ordered lunch on the beach and stayed outside as long as we possibly could.

One night we did leave the hotel for a boat tour. We were picked up at the hotel dock and got a tour of the lake from a person we called “Italian Tom Cruise” because he truly did seem to be his twin. We booked through Como Classic Boats and had an excellent experience.

The other very, very special experience of our trip was eating at Mistral, the Villa’s Michelin star restaurant. You do not have to be a guest of the hotel to make a reservation. This was my first experience with a Michelin star restaurant and I am already aching to go to another. The chef has been at Mistral for 20 years and uses molecular cooking techniques. We did the tasting menu and each course was truly better than the last.

This was my face the entire time and I may or may not have gotten teary eyed. Give me good food and good art and I’m a goner. The setting was also incredible.

I truly cannot say enough good things about our stay at Villa Serbelloni and am so grateful for these memories.

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Have you ever been converted in your travel style? Do you like to switch things up with action and relaxation?