Originally Posted by Perche

Whatever you do, don't rent a car. There is no parking in most towns at Lakes Como and Maggiore. To get to both places costs abut three euros on a local train from Milan, and takes 45 minutes. Once you are on the lake, you take a ferry From place to place to visit the sites, or a train.

Headline news in Italy as mentioned, Switzerland has removed the ceiling it had on how much higher the franc could go, vs the euro. This is catastrophe, threatening to put some large banks out of business. In other words if you were ok paying 20 dollars for a sandwich and 10 dollars for a soda at a fast food place, travel to Switzerland just got even more expensive.