Saturday, April 12
I'm officially moved out of the Jacques Dalphin apartment in Carouge. I set my alarm and took out all the garbage before bringing my bags down and dropping the keys off in the repository. It's been a fun two months in that apartment; you know, I never did get around to turning on the TV... And in a way, it's comforting to know that I'm adding my name to a long list of names of other employees who have stayed there when they first moved to the company's Geneva offices.
So long, Jacques Dalphin, I'll miss your creaky floorboards, humongous living room, and insanely warm comforter on the bed. You were a great home base for this little stint.
It felt weird dropping the keys into a drop box like this but not as weird as not having keys in my pocket: it completely threw off my routine check for wallet, keys, & phone.
My first stop was back to my colleague, who's family was kind enough to volunteer to hold onto one of my bags for my week of vacation. The bag is about 6 kg of chocolate and is just a bit unwieldy; so having a place to cache it while I zip around the country with a light carryon suitcase is super helpful! And when I arrived, they invited me to join for breakfast and coffee: delicious banana & creme fraiche on toast plus strawberries 😋 While chit chatting, I realized that I haven't taken much time in the mornings to simply relax, so the hour with them was a nice experience. Eventually, it was time to go; I had a 5.5 hour train ride ahead and if I want to do things in Lugano, then I can't spend the whole day in Geneva 😆
It's
the fields of canola (colza) that really popped out due to their yellow
color during the train ride; these fields have only recently started to
bloom in such earnest.
Leaving Geneve, I took my time to savor the views of Lac Leman. It was surprisingly clear despite all the clouds up above; if I ever come back to Geneva in the summer time, I'll have to take a boat ride over to Evian-les-Bains and/or Yvoire (people say they're true tourist season villages). I enjoyed views of the lake but never actually traversed it to the French side on this visit.
The itinerary for Lugano involved passing from Lausanne to Lucerne and then switching trains. This was different from previous train rides around the lake and I enjoyed the shift in perspective as we deviated from Lac Leman.
The train ride went smoothly; I mostly took advantage of the time to finish back filling my work notes from conversations I'd had last week in the office, as best I could. It was a good blend of writing, dozing, and admiring the landscape passing by. As I began the approach into the Italian speaking Ticino canton, the train suddenly started encountering super long tunnels; I guess this canton must've been very isolated until those tunnels were carved out.
In my 7 weeks of work, I managed to make notes on 2/3 of this notebook, which I'd commandeered from a visit to a legacy-DRT facility. Not that the volume of notes matters all that much, but I felt pretty proud to have received and processed so much info in my short time; the beauty of notes is that I can forget it all now, right? 😂
With only 15 minutes between trains, I simply took a bit of time to poke my head outside of the Lucerne train station.
On the move from Lucerne, I wanted to snap a pic of these little gardens. I'd noticed them in other places too, I guess the Swiss use them as community gardens? There was a part here that almost looked like aquaculture too.
Ticino is south of the "true" Alps and I feel like I could sense a difference in the surrounding mountains because of it. I think the vegetation looked different or maybe it was something with the light. The mountains themselves seemed ever so different too.
Having only visited Milano and Vercelli in Italy, I felt like the towns I'd begun to pass by in Ticino felt similar in color and design, which makes perfect sense.
In Lugano, I was able to check into the hotel and made a beeline for the activity I'd figured on: going up a mountain via funicular to get the view of the area. Sadly, once I arrived, I found that they had shut down the funiculaire at 6PM, right when I showed up. So I walked around Lugano and its lakefront instead, which was really a lovely exercise. The town is definitely different from other Swiss towns I've visited and I think it's related to being ever so slightly further south and having more Italian culture. In some ways, the lakefront reminded me of San Sebastian in Spain but I don't think it's a particularly useful exercise to make these kinds of comparisons.
If I'd found encountering German to be weird when visiting things last week, imagine my surprise to find Italian everywhere 😆 but in all honesty, the Italian is quite close to French so I was better able to make sense of things. Buona Pasqua = Bonne Pâque = Happy Easter
The hotel had a little fun with their landscaping and threw in some neat little "caves" underneath the rosemary.
If you end up staying in a hotel in Switerland, odds are that you get a city or regional pass that usually gives free public transport in the area plus discounts on many activities. Most public transit day passes clock in at 5-10 CHF, so it's not a bad deal if you didn't already have country wide travel pass active.
And there goes the funicolare, it's going up empty to bring down the last car of the day's passengers. Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow.
Il lago, while I wasn't able to get a bird's eye view over the lake, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a lakeside walk and soak in the John's eye view.
It's a me, John. My eyes kept getting drawn to the cliff face (or what I presume is a cliff face) on the far shore.
I'll get you next time, San Salvatore. Neeeext Time!
All these plane trees and yet none of them are connected; the people of Lugano must be very aggressive pruners.
It's a shame that this funiculi funicula appears out of order, though I don't quite understand where it's going to.
Ooh, sweet ride.
I opted to take my afternoon snack (le gouter en français) on the lakefront. I was able to use my 10 cent wood/plastic fork & knife combo from Migros to carve off chunks of cheese and then I tossed bits of the crust to the ducks below. I skedaddled when the commotion began to attract a swan looking for handouts too.
Hmm, it's either a weird water fountain or a very confident bidet... 🤔 ah heck, I'll roll the dice.
Flower power?
The city had certainly done an impressive job with their planter beds; no shortage of color nor fragrance here.
I imagine this is only one of many rivers that feed into this massive lake but I thought it was pretty neat how the town had built access to the water along certain parts of it. This dog certainly wasn't complaining.
I did eventually find a route up the other mountain of Lugano's lakefront (though only part way), which made for a nice panorama at sunset. And thankfully, the lower section of that's mountain's funicular runs on a regular schedule, so 2 CHF saved me 30 minutes of walking back down a winding path.
So the lower section operates all the time but the section up to the top of the mountain has the same schedule as the one to San Salvatore that I'd just missed.
Good thing these feet operate on my schedule! The walking path here serviced a surprising number of estates, each marked with a "no trespassing" sign. One residence even had an arch over the walkway...
I lucked out and made it to the park just before the sun got obfuscated by mountains!
Aw, look it him. So proud of himself with all his sweat and his undershirt.
And like that, the sun disappeared, never to be seen again. Unless it wants to be seen, in which case, if it sees you before you see it... look out.
Someone's got a very nice garden stashed away next to the road up here and they take their hobby very seriously.
Honestly, it was refreshing to find a machine that still used physical buttons to distribute tickets; I'm just glad that I had a 2CHF coin on me.
The funicular was a quick ride down but the walk would've been at least half an hour; I'm still always impressed that the two trains side-step each other at the last moment.
From there, I wandered the old town a bit before finally retiring to the hotel and having dinner there. I can see the appeal of Lugano, it is a very charming town with its lake and landscape; given how tricky it is to get here from the popular Swiss entry points of Geneva and Zurich, I can see why some people may choose to spend more time in Ticino once arrived or to tie it into a northern Italy trip.
La piazza was pretty nice, I won't lie. The rest of the streets were either very quiet but nicely decorated (all shops no restaurants) or fairly plain with people dining outside 😂
Not too shabby a view of San Salvatore by night
Another funicular to convey people between the train station above and the town center below. I'm pretty certain that this isn't the one I'd seen earlier in the day because this one was located (and seemingly traveled inside) a shopping center.
With the funicular to my left, I was surprised to encounter a car parked in the middle of the very narrow street. I'm guessing traffic is only one way considering the sidewalks have steps.
There's no shortage of palm trees around Lugano, in particular around the hotel grounds. In fact, it's a veritable jungle maze between the hotel buildings.
I normally wouldn't order just a pasta dish for dinner, but I wasn't all that hungry thanks to the 180g of cheese earlier in the afternoon. The 2 dL bottle of wine was a novelty for me but the spaghetti was top notch 👌
I was too late to capture it, but the night was cloudy/foggy and the moon so bright that I could see the shadow of a plane crossing in front of the moon stretch out for the 5 seconds the plane's traversal took!
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