Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:54:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Day 2 - the other statistics
I woke up at 8 or 9 not knowing what I was going to do today. The weather reports said rain everywhere in the afternoon/evening, basically moving from west to east. So a trip to Zermatt was out of the question. My other options were Lugano and/or Bellinzano and/or Lucarno or Chur and/or St. Moritz or well... you get the idea :)
After a quick breakfast at the motel (one of the "cozier" rooms among European motels), I walked to the train station and started looking at the departures board. No idea where I wanted to go! The first thing that caught my eye was the 10:21 express train to Arth-Goldau, Bellinzona, Lugano, Chiasso, and the train would eventually go into that other country with a lot of rude people but my rail pass was only for Switzerland.
So I got on it. Found a nice spot and got comfortable with the roadtrip songs on my iPhone. (No, Apple is not paying me any money to write these things). What follows are thoughts that wandered through my crazy little head, as per my notes taken at the time:
"Stop at Brunnen and/or Schwyz and/or Arth-Goldau stations on the way back or future trips"
"Schwyz is particularly beautiful!"
"Fluelen is even better!!!"
"Erstfeld is good too"
"Goschennen = best views so far from the station, but very few trains might be stopping here"
"'Pop Goes The World' [by Men Without Hats] is a good theme for mountain driving/train riding!"
yeah. A lot of random stuff. But I was going crazy clicking away with my Sony camera (see? NOT Apple) throughout that whole train ride down. I didn't get down at Bellinzano even though I saw a local train parked on the next platform with destination "Locarno" -- one of my options. More than 280 pictures were taken on that ride -- its a gorgeous train ride. I remember driving the same stretch of road and I have to say the train is more scenic (even though they go next to each other for most of the way)!
Anyway, I'm glad I didn't get down at any of those stops... Just before pulling into Lugano I did my "usual" thing on trains before I have to get off of them (no I'm not going to say what it is, but basically, it has to do with my being cheap). But as I was walking back to my seat I struck up a conversation with another passenger -- she had noticed me taking all those pictures, and within 5 minutes the three of us (one of her friends too) decided to roam around Lugano for the day. We got off the train, I put my roller back in a locker, we took the funicular down (free with swiss rail pass), and pretty much spent the rest of the day walking around town...
There was a church there which was surprisingly nice from the inside. Renaissance-era wall paintings which were as good as or better than a lot of other churches I've seen! There weren't any Sunday services there, so we freely roamed around inside taking a lot of pictures, then back out again and along Lake Lugano (gelato... mmmmmmmmm).
After watching a chess game (where the pieces were the size of my nephew), we kept strolling along the lakefront, through a park with two humongous wooden heads (attached to bodies), and ... "wildlife" far away on a sailboat that truly rivals the wildlife in Vancouver! Maybe even bolder than in Vancouver!
Anyway, the above has been an inside joke which only two people (now, four people) understand... so I'll move on.... wow its 12:39am already?
By now all of us were getting hungry, so we started looking for a restaurant called "Moran" or "Molon" or something like that -- I forget the name! Basically it was a recommendation from a shopkeeper. Well we didn't find that particular restaurant and finally ended up eating at another place where the waiters were ...how should I put this... "moody" ... (vague enough?) .... but the food was great, and the profiterole was mouth-wateringly delicious -- why can't they have desserts of this quality back home?
After that it was time to make our way back to the train station, and we got lost in the tiny streets of this tiny town. On other occasions this would have been a good thing but we did have a train to catch! Enter Apple iPhone to the rescue.
I turned Data Roaming "on", flicked my fingers to google maps and gps, and found the way back to the train station. The good news: It eventually did get us to the train station. The bad news: that involved climbing about 5000 steps (ok thats an exaggeration), and it did NOT find the way to the funicular stop as I had originally wanted it to do!
oh well... the climb up took its toll on me but it extended our stay in Lugano by about 2 hours (by virtue of missing our train back). So we relaxed in one of the cafe's next to the station with great views of the town and lake and mountains and buildings below....
The train was right on time (THIS IS SWITZERLAND!), and I bid adieu at Arth Goldau for my connecting train to Zurich while my travel partners for the day went on to Luzern... They're here for another week.... I'm flying back in 9 1/2 hours from now. Lucky them.
And so until November, adieu to you too,
-me.
(p.s. I haven't proofread this email either. Gimme a break, I need sleep... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm dreamland!)
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| Aug 30 | Contents |