Lugano Easter Weekend

For Easter Torrey had 2 1/2 days of holiday and Claire had an entire week.  We decided to go biking in Lugano which has a reputation for having good biking. Plus it is a few hours south and a bit warmer than Zurich.  Thursday morning Claire wrote a final exam (7 week intensive course in Conservation Biology) then  off the the train station.  We arrived in Lugano about 5pm and rode our bikes to Guesthouse Castagnola where we were staying.  It was small suite in a very old house, but beautifully renovated with the right balance of modern and antique.  Our micro-kitchen was very "micro" with just a hotplate so we decided to go out for dinner.  Dinner was quite good but as usual in Switzerland very expensive, with the exception of cheap wine.  I guess in the Italian part of Switzerland you can't have expensive wine.

Expresso to start the day.

Ready for a day of biking.

 Friday, we went on a long mountain bike ride on a big peninsula that just out into Lake Lugano.  It was supposed to be a 3 hour bike ride, but it took us quite a bit longer than that.  Lugano is quite hilly so we began with a steep climb up to a small village.  Then onto a rocky single track for a while.  This was a bit more than I (Claire) expected for mountain biking but after overcoming my initial fears I managed to do quite well.  I'm sure it would have been easy for Matthew.  That was the most technical part the the ride. The remainder was various types of paths, mostly through chestnut forest and a little bit of road, with more up than down.  We passed numerous churches, a few little villages, and farms.

Passing through Lugano on our way to the trails.

The first leg of our bike.

A set of stairs our our bike ride along the side of an old church.

A brief stop in downtown to take in some of the Easter festivities. 

Easter is all about bunnies and eggs.

After a long but good day of biking we made a pretty good meal on our hotplate thanks to Patak's (curry in a jar) and headed out to a Good Friday concert.  It was excellent, especially because it was free.  Bach's Mass in D minor and Bach's Easter Oratorio.  None of the pictures turned out very well but these two at least give you an idea of what it was like.

It rained all Friday night, so although it wasn't raining on Saturday morning, it would have been pretty wet for biking. So we saw some of the local sites instead. We took a funicular up Monte San Salvatore (the pointy mountain you can see in the first picture).

View of Lugano from top of the church on top of Monte San Salvatore.

Looking towards Italy.

They had pictures of many of the funiculars in Switzerland complete with a brief history.  This one looks like fun.

We took an afternoon boat cruise to the Customs Museum, put together I suspect to educate the average person about what they shouldn't bring into Switzerland.  It was still quite interesting, and we got to watch a great storm while we waited for the boat. 

Sunday, we planned on biking on taking our bikes up another funicular and bike at the top.  However, the unmanned funicular clearly didn't take bikes, so we left them at the bottom. Turns out it is a two stage funicular and if we had rode up to the next station we could have put our bikes on.  It turned out OK as it was incredibly windy and cold at the top.  So we wandered around for a short while and came back down.  

Going up the unmanned funicular.

Waiting for the 2nd stage of the funicular to get going.

Another typical day in Switzerland.

We were running out of things to do so we rode our bikes out to a small lake, which was quite nice but we were ready to leave.  Turns out we got on the wrong train, our train was to leave at 1:12, apparently there is another that leaves at 1:10 also to Zurich.  We got on the one leaving at 1:10.  This normally isn't a problem with our GA cards, but our bike reservations were for the other train, and there are a limited of bike spaces on the train.  Fortunately, the train conductor was understanding and after Torrey hung our two bikes on one rack all was OK.  When Torrey asked why there are two trains leaving so close together the response was very Swiss.  Apparently the trains from Italy are always late, so the first train is for the Swiss (who are on time) and the second is for the late Italians.  

We arrived back in Zurich and apparently while it had poured with rain in Lugano it had snowed in Zurich.