Photoeclectia -- Ticino, Switzerland

Ticino, Switzerland

Evening View of Lake Lugano from Le Pergole

Thursday, October 1–Thursday September 24, 2009

Lugano
We had trains to catch, so we were out the door by 8:30 a.m. Although we worried about connections, we needn’t have. As I’ve mentioned, the Swiss are very punctual, and if you’re on time for their schedule, you will make all of your connections. We traveled from Lauterbrunnen to Interlaken-Ost, then from there to Lucerne (we could have saved the trip to Lucerne earlier in the trip), and from there to the Italian Ticino region of Switzerland. It’s hard to do anything but look out the windows on these train trips (because the landscape is so gorgeous) or sleep (because the train is so relaxing). So that’s what we did. The guy in the next seat over was itching to talk to us, but he spoke only German and we spoke only English—not conducive for a conversation.

We took a taxi to the center of Lugano to collect our rental car. The woman behind the EuropCar desk was very helpful and assisted us in getting our bearings. We were able to find our villa, Le Pergole, with no trouble. Once we got there (up a white-knuckle, very steep, very curvy road), we wandered around a bit, trying to figure out which was our apartment, and once we found it, how to get in. This is the downside of renting apartments. You're on your own much more than if you go to a hotel where someone is always on hand to take care of the customers. Thanks to the owner’s barking dogs who let her know we had arrived, she came down to greet us and show us to our apartment. We profited from some dispute the landlady had had with another customer, and she upgraded us from the studio apartment we had contracted for that had a partial view of the lake to a much larger two-bedroom apartment (with the upstairs bedroom closed off) for the same price. A great deal, and the view from the balcony was spectacular!

The landlady spent some time with us, advising us where to go and what to see while in Lugano and the surrounding area. The villa itself appeared to be very old, but was solid in its granite and marble construction. We had a big livingroom/diningroom, a separate kitchen, a bedroom with its own gorgeous view, and a very large bathroom that included, unexpectedly, a small washing machine. There was a winding staircase upstairs to one other small bedroom.

After we got settled, we prepared for a foray into town for food. The traffic lights that let through only one car at a time made for quite a traffic jam. We only had to go a couple of miles, but it took a long time. We finally found the place we thought we had been directed to, but had a hard time finding the ready-cooked food the landlady had told us about—by the time we got there, there was only some unappetizing-looking pizza. But we were hungry by that time, so we brought home a pizza and made a salad from leftovers from the last apartment. Later on, when we knew our way around Lugano better, we discovered that we had found the wrong place.

Friday, October 2

Lake Como
We got a really late start the next morning, partly because we were tired, and partly because it was nice to dawdle around the apartment, particularly the balcony. The view was so great! So at 11:30 a.m., we finally set out for Lake Como in Italy. We had brought our Garmin GPS and European city maps with us. Having the GPS was really indispensible during this trip, and saved us from getting seriously lost quite a few times.

The road on the way to Como was extremely narrow and windy, at times terrifyingly so. At one point, I (the designated driver) was negotiating a tight space in the road with an oncoming car, and sideswiped with my sideview mirror a large handbag swung too far into the roadway, scaring both the owner of the handbag (I’m sure) and my husband, who was watching it all happen from the passenger seat. I only heard the thump. We had no handbags, or arms for that matter, stuck to our car upon arrival at our destination, so I assumed Ms. Large Handbag was fine and probably being a lot more careful when walking near the road. We also had a close call with an oncoming car whose driver decided to pass all the other cars in his (and my) lane. I had nowhere to go, having sheer rock on my right side, and could only slow down and hope he found a hole to slide into—which he did.

We stopped as much as we could to pant (the driving) and to take photos. Our first stop was Porlezza where we at our packed lunch on a park bench overlooking the lake. We then stopped in Menaggio, a cute little town on the upper end of Lake Como. We walked around for a while and enjoyed gelato. We finally arrived in Como, a fairly large city that was packed with tourists. We walked along the lake for a while, then found a funicular that took us to the top of a mountain where we were supposed to see great views of the city and the lake. The weather was great—no rain, sunny, somewhat too warm—but it was too hazy. The view from the top was nil. We came back down, and decided to head back to Lugano, even though it was only 4:30. I didn’t want to get stuck on unfamiliar windy roads in the dark. As it turned out, the way back was on an autostrada and very quick. This gave us time to negotiate the again heavy traffic in Lugano and to refind the town center.

By the time we did all this, it was time to think about supper. Lots was going on in the Lugano city center—it looked like an Octoberfest feast. We finally settled on a restaurant in the middle of the hubbub where we could listen to the wandering musicians and watch the myriad of people out for the evening. After supper, we wandered around the festivities a bit before heading home. The strangest sight we saw was two American Indians all festooned in their Indian regalia singing Indian music. They were actually very good, but seemed misplaced in the Swiss/Italian venue. To the Swiss, they were probably a very big novelty.

We finally figured out how to pay for parking at the Parking Silo. On our first night in Lugano, we ended up getting free parking because we didn’t know we were supposed to use our ticket to pay for parking before we left the garage. How would we know? The Help voice that came over the intercom was unable or too tired to deal with two stupid Americans. He let the bar up, giving us free parking. This second time, we thought to investigate before trying the leave the garage again and discovered the payment machine upstairs. A nice fellow explained things to us.

Saturday, October 3–Sunday, October 4
We decided to make Saturday a lazy day. Got up a bit late, then went to the city center to have lunch and do a bit of shopping. We really did little else. We had read that Lugano residents value and protect their leisure time. The evidence was there below us on the lake Saturday morning in the form of several large groups of small sailboats going by. It looked like a sailing class as the boats were divided into small groups, each preceded by a small motorboat.

We ran into our landlady on the way back in to put away the food—we had been on our way to take the funicular up to Monte Bre—but she had obtained information about going to Zermatt, a side trip we had expressed interest in, so we went instead to the train station to find out if it was indeed feasible. Which it was not. It would take 5 hours just to get there and 5 hours to get back, and would cost a fortune. Remembering the day lost to Lucerne, we decided not to do it. So we took a walk in the upper reaches of our neighborhood when we got back, until dusk. We found a pretty church up there with a nice view over the lake and many expensive houses.

After a leisurely meal on the balcony, we got to work figuring out the rest of our vacation based on information we had been collecting about the Engadine region of Switzerland, our next destination. It took all evening to do—we were up until very late. At exactly midnight, our electrical converter that was powering the laptop blew up the power socket, burned the plastic on the converter, and flipped the circuits, turning off the electricity in half of the apartment. Oops.

The next morning, the not-so-happy landlady came over to inspect the power problems and to advise what we should and shouldn’t be plugging in, such as our laptop with the power supply. The conversation morphed into our travel plans (a good way to divert her!), and she was with us a long time, talking about the Engadine and many other topics, including her tenure as a world champion downhill ski racer in St. Moritz. She recommended several locations along our continuing route and, because of the demise of our Internet access, even helped us to secure our next two accommodations from her own computer. Eventually I removed the power supply from the laptop and cautiously connected the laptop directly to the socket with a plug adapter, which seemed to work fine, allowing us to put the finishing touches on the third portion of our trip ourselves.

We didn’t get out of the house until after 3 p.m.! There was a wine festival going on in the city center, so we went to that. Not usually something we would be attracted to, but we really had fun. It was mostly a locals event—lots of crafts, food, singing, etc. There were a slew of local singing groups wandering around performing. I caught a few of them in videos. We also did a bit of shopping. It would have been even more fun if we had known a bit of German or Italian.

After wandering around the festival for a few hours, we stumbled across Manor, a sort of restaurant/shopping center our landlady had told us about. This was the place, we realized, that we had been supposed to find our first night there! The restaurant specialized in prepared food you can either eat there or take home. We bought a meal to take home and enjoy on the balcony. It was another gorgeous day, and we were trying to spend as much time out there as possible with the peaceful view before having to say goodbye to Lugano.

End note: another disaster that evening! I was sitting on a small stool in front of the computer when all of sudden, it sagged and dumped me onto the floor. It was an antique that had had its day. A couple of the legs had splintered under my weight. (I didn’t think I had gained any weight with all the walking on this vacation!!) We worried that after that after attempting to burn down the villa with the power supply, the landlady would certainly throw us off the balcony when she found we were now destroying her antiques as well!

Monday, October 5

Ascona, Bellinzona
Putting off dealing with the destroyed stool for the time being, the next morning we headed for Ascona on Lago Maggiore, a place highly recommended by our landlady as a nice town to have lunch and look around. We found it with no trouble, but the town itself was a bit disappointing. We had expected it to be more like the uncommercial Menaggio, which we loved, but it was very commercial and Coney Islandish near the lake. After we wandered around for a while in the interior of the town looking for a nice place to eat lunch, we finally found a place that looked promising. We didn't get the lake view, but the meal and the ambiance was great.

Leaving Ascona, we drove up to Bellizona, purportedly home to three castles. There are indeed three castles, inside and outside of town, but we had a really tough time finding our way to any of them, even the ones in town. First, we parked at the hospital by mistake, and it was too far away. By the time we found another place to park and climbed a million steps up to one of the castles, it was nearly 4 p.m. When we got there, we found out that we could have driven up to the top and parked just outside the castle entrance. (Arghh.) We purchased entry to gain access to a billion pot shards from the archeological dig at the castle and climbed a zillion more steps to see them. Then we walked the battlements. By the time we finished with the first castle, it was too late to see any of the others, so we headed back to Lugano and the City Center where we bought dinner (at Manor) to enjoy one last time on the balcony.

End note: the landlady did not throw us off the balcony for breaking her antique stool. She was quite understanding and pointed out that she had neglected to notice when she bought it that the stool had already been repaired in the spot it broke. In fact, she fussed that perhaps I had been injured in my slow crash to the floor. All ended well and we parted fondly, already missing our leisurely and relaxing time in Lugano.

View from Balcony of Le Pergole