July 1st & 2nd - Heading home

Since our flight back to the U.S. left at 10:30am on the 2nd, we had to leave Locarno on the 1st and stay near the Zurich airport. We chose to upgrade our Swiss Pass to a first-class reservation on the Cisalpino fast train to Zurich. What a way to travel!! Comfortable seats, lots of leg room, coffee and food served right to your seat. Much better than air travel.


As we traveled though the Alps, we marveled at the Swiss engineering of roads and railways. The Swiss public transportation system is second to none in my opinion.
Arriving at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, we could see the last remains of all of the buildup centered around the Euro Cup. You will note that the arms are missing from these players. A few hours later, their heads were off and smashed as well.


We took a walking tour through Zurich during the afternoon. It is a big city and one afternoon doesn't do it justice. It was another hot day so we took another cruise on the lake. All along the shore we could see mobs of people enjoying the water.


We chose to eat out last dinner in Switzerland at the Restaurant zum Kropf near the Münsterhof square in Zurich's Old Town. Of Zurich’s many beer and wine restaurants built in the late 19th century, Restaurant zum Kropf is the only one to have preserved its original decor practically unchanged. In the lower area, the so-called “Bärengraben” (bear pit), accessible from the In Gassen street entry, the guest is met by an oil painting of a rustic drinking scene surrounded by finely arranged paneling. Stretching across the paneling is a fresco depicting cheerful cherubs, singing frogs, musical monkeys, and lively drinking buddies. The vault is ornamented with “culinary emblems”– a cornucopia of vegetables, crabs, and tortoises – indicating a rich banquet of food.

After walking at dusk and riding another tram, we took our last train ride out to our hotel in Kloten. Our room at the Allegra Hotel was reserved by Untour since it offers frequent shuttle service to the airport only 15 minutes away. The rooms in the hotel are decorated based on a painting by Piet Mondrian and the whole hotel was quite a change from our previous accomodations.
After checking in for the flight home, we reflected on what a wonderful vacation this Untour had been. We were able to do what we wanted when we wanted and to adapt our schedule to changes in opportunities and weather. We counted up that we had been on 34 trains, 17 buses, 17 cable cars, and 5 boats. Using the Swiss Pass was a fun and easy way to travel.

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.

June 29th - Off to a festival on Lake Lugano

"Festival of the fishes, 29 June 2008, Plaza at the Lake, Caslano, from 11 hours, fried little fishes, plays the 'Trio Malcantonese', Lottery." At least that is how I translated the poster. The Untour newsletter that we received at orientation listed this festival as an event we might like to attend. It is connected to the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul and is based on the feeding of the fishes and loaves to the crowd of 5,000 by Jesus.

So Susan and I took the S2 commuter train to Lugano where we changed to the FLP (Ferrovia Lugano-Ponte Tresa) "little orange train." The emblem on the side of the little train reads "a smile every 20 minutes." In about a half hour, we were in Caslano which is south of Lugano on a neck of Lake Lugano.

When got off the train in Caslano, we couldn't see the lake and were not sure in which direction to go. We wanted to visit the Alprose Museum of Chocolat so did that first since there were directions at the train station. The production line was shut down on Sunday but we looked at all the machinery, watched a movie in English with a Japanese couple, looked at all the exhibits about making and selling chocolates, and tried a few samples. The ladies there directed us to the lake.

At the lake, we found a real small-town festival going on. There were booths selling various stuff and at the far end there was a gathering of a couple thousand people with a line forming to buy food and drinks. We joined in since this would be our lunch. Susan waited while it took almost an hour for me to get the food.
The reason that the line was so slow was because they were only using two deep fat friers to cook the fish and each cooker could only make about ten servings.

The little fish from the lake were delicious and we enjoyed the trio of musicians very much. They played and sang typical Swiss/Italian music. As the day went on there were other groups standing around singing as well. Everyone was having a good time as you can see from all the bottles that lined the middle of the tables.



After having lunch, we had a gelato and walked around to see some of the sights of the town. The cemetery had very elaborate family monuments. It was hot enough that the children and dogs were playing in the fountain. We sat under the huge sycamore tree near the dock until we decided to cool off by putting our feet in the lake.


At 3:30 we boarded the ship "Italia" and spent the next two hours cruising on Lake Lugano. We stopped at several of the very pretty towns that dot the lake.

We especially enjoyed seeing Morcote from the ship. We had visited here by car on a trip 25 years ago.
As we were about to disembark in Lugano, I started to take a photo of Susan with Mt. San Salvatore in the background like one I had taken 25 years earlier. A young girl came over and asked if she could take the photo of both of us. We are very happy to have these fond memories of Lake Lugano.