Is anyone wondering what we've been doing? Well, trying to work around raindrops, we had quite a basic week here in Lugano.
Besides some local walks, last Wednesday we took a bus/train/bus combination to Luino, Italy, which is on Lake Maggiore. They have a huge weekly market every Wednesday. It's been YEARS since we've been there. Although it was pouring rain in the early morning, we persisted and enjoyed a nice day with sunshine.
My only frustration, though, was having lunch in Luino. Of course meals are always good in Italy, but they just don't want to serve tap water, and by law, any operating restaurant has to have drinkable tap water! So when I asked the waiter for some (in Switzerland and France they give it - no problem), the waiter tells me "no tap water. The water is not good to drink." And it's not like we didn't order anything else to drink. We ordered wine.
So I'm on a campaign to stop this practice! Any Italian restaurant that won't serve tap water is getting a bad review about it from me on TripAdvisor - I hope others traveling to Italy will do the same, and you'll see those Italian restaurants change fast!
On Thursday we checked out a couple towns in a valley nearby that we've never been to. Again, a bus/train/bus combination to get us to Isone & Medeglia. These two towns seem so secluded in this beautiful valley, but I feel a bit sorry for those in Isone, at the end of the valley - - there is an army base there, and we could hear practice gunfire and bombs going off! It wasn't very peaceful for the residents.
Rick getting a sip of water on our walk between Isone and Medeglia.
This is a common tree found in Ticino, but this one has been carefully trained to be like a wall. Notice how the branches are supported along the wall. The tree has actually grown around its supports!
Now, has anyone heard of geocaching? I heard about it on TV here. It's a game app that leads you to hidden "caches" all over the world. I downloaded the app and we tried to find our first cache, which was somewhere near the center of Medeglia. The GPS showed we were right at the spot. We looked all over, without wanting to snoop around private property, but no luck! Disappointing. :-(
Friday was spent having lunch at the home of our friends, Fabio and Chiara.
Saturday Rick and I went to explore another town that we see when we are on the train going north from Lugano. The second train stop from Lugano is Taverne-Torricello. We can see something like a castle surrounded by vineyards higher up the mountain slope at the top edge of the town. Normally, this doesn't seem like an interesting place to stop - the zone around the train station is industrial and the big highway runs right down the center of the valley.
Once we got over the river and under the highway underpass, away from the industrial zone, we found a beautiful town with quite a large original "nucleo" - the old centers of towns which are mostly preserved with stone homes and cobblestone streets. It was a nice surprise!
This is the castle which is private and part of the vineyard. The towns in the distance on the other side of the valley are Ponte Capriasca and Sala Capriasca. The pointy mountains in the distance in the center are called the "Denti della Vecchia" - the old lady's teeth!
A great walk today!
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