Leaving Montreux, we had a route mapped out to get us to Lugano that took us up into the Alps. You go over the Alps to get to the southeastern tip of Switzerland from the southwestern tip of Switzerland. Beautiful scenery, it was like looking at a timewarp with the Alpine architecture, cows, sheep and snowcapped mountains of Heidi.
Richard and I had been to Switzerland before, but it was a first for our daughters and my mom. At one point we were high enough up on a mountain that we were looking down into a rainbow in the valley! It had rained on and off for our entire trip and we were getting expert at whipping out umbrellas. The sparkling, sunshine on the wet mountains made for some terrific pictures.
Then we were in a small town, looking for our exit and the road was closed. We live in Denver, so we're familiar with May="mud season"="construction season" in our own mountains. Or maybe the pass wasn't cleared of snow yet? Either way, we found another option, tried that route and ended up stymied again!
"You can't get there from here", I said to Richard. But this was when we remembered passing a line of cars at the train station. We drove back down, inquired within and bought our $20 ticket for a RIDE ON A TRAIN FERRY to Lugano! Brilliant! We never did find out why the roads were closed. We spent the next 30 minutes in near darkness in a very, very long tunnel driving under a mountain. It cut 45 minutes off of our trip to Lugano and plopped us down on the other side of the Alps.
Then driving down to Lugano Lake, showing them all the beautiful park we had walked through the last time we were here. The quaint old square and the little shops of the downtown area. Again, I hadn't booked a hotel yet, we were there early afternoon so we stopped and inquired within at one down near the lake. YIKES. No thank you, we are not prepared for €200 (which is about $300 US) per room and needing two rooms thank you very much. My goal is to keep total housing as close to .
€100 Euro per night as possible ($150US).
Hotel Huntress strikes again. I went to a variety of sites each day, checking hotels.com, Rick Steve's recommendations in his guide books, Priceline.com, booking.com, venere.com and even vrbo.com, which was where we found the Paris apartment. Lugano was pricey as an in season lake front town can be in late May. Rick Steve recommended a hostel, with the caveat that this was likely one of the very nicest hostels in Europe.
He was right! Up on a small hill with a commanding view of the lake, a very short walk from the train/furnicular station (the furnicular drops you right down to the lake), and gorgeous grounds of a former mansion. We booked two rooms with a nice shared patio in our room and had a very pleasant night with lovely coffee on the veranda off the communal eating room in the morning.
We excitedly packed up and took them all down to the historic piazza to shop the Gabanni shops for food before heading back on the road. Our first "Italian language" stop was beautiful weather, blue skies, the lake and Gabanni's bread and cappucinnos. *sigh* I could live in Lugano. Really.
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