June 30th - Trip into the Centovalli

Since this was our last day to do any hiking, we decided to venture into the Centovalli. Locarno is the eastern terminus of the wonderful Centovalli railway, one of Switzerland's most scenic rides. The train departs from beneath Locarno's main railway station on a narrow-gauge track into the spectacular Centovalli - so named for its "hundred" side valleys - most of the time winding slowly on precarious bridges and viaducts above ravine-like depths. Along the way are picturesque villages with interesting art and culture.

This is the one time when we missed the train. We intended to catch the 8:13 train but got to the station at 8:15. The next train was a slower one stopping at many small stations. You can see that there weren't many passengers.
We rode the train across the Italian border and up to Santa Maria Maggiore, the highest point of the railroad. Santa Maria was a very pretty town with many decorated buildings and a nice plaza.


We didn't have any Euros to do any shopping but did go into the Chiesa Parrocchiale church. It was surprisingly large for a small community up in the Piedmont foothills. It had a beautiful altar.
We spent less than an hour in Santa Maria and then rode the train back towards Locarno to Verdasio at 1,700 ft. There we took the Funivia Verdasio cable car up to Rasa, a small village at 2,900 ft. Rasa is the only village left in Ticino that is inaccessible by cars. Luckily, the Postmail lady was taking the village's mail up at the same time and could show us the routine.

From Rasa you can look down on several villages scattered around the mountain slopes.
As we were walking through the village, we noticed a shop with interesting ceramics. The artist, Renato Domiczek, came in and talked with us about his art. He specializes in raku ceramics and teaches classes to students who come up to Rasa for a week.

We started to take a hike around the mountain from Rasa on one of the mule tracks. We soon found that hiking on the rough stones was not to our liking. We found the old remains of a building, sat in the shade eating our picnic, and took the next available cable car back down to the station. That turned out to be about an hour later than we expected since the operator was not back from having his lunch

We still didn't have to wait long for the next train.

Our goodbye party was held that evening in a grotto in Giubiasco near Bellinzona. We passed this interesting fountain while walking there from the train station. I couldn't resist taking the photo.

The grotto was really a place where men came to play bocce. They let us move in on their game to play for a bit.






As you can see from this photo, we had a hard time getting the large balls (boccia) close to the small red target ball (pallina) which is the objective in bocce.
This is a photo of the Untour group in Ticino with us. Other than at orientation, this was the only time we got together. The two ladies in front were the Untour representatives. Untour treated us to a spaghetti dinner.