First days in Switzerland (030515)

Sonntag 3. Mai 2015

Driving to Ticino and back..

Saturday 2.5.2015 at 9:30 local time, I finally arrived in Switzerland. I was waiting for almost half year of that moment. First day was really nice with the welcoming committee and spending time with the family and the best of all, with my girlfriend. Last time we saw face to face, was three months ago.

Next day, after good, long sleeping I got a mission: Brake your spine in Ticino.

Ticino is a very beatiful, nice canton in Italian part of Switzerland. Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Our job was to take one big and heavy cabinet to the summerhouse of my girlfriend´s family, to the second floor by the stairs, of course :-). That house is located near the border of Italy and Switzerland in Gerra (Gambarogno). We rented a big car with my GF´s brother and drove there with the cabinet, it took about three hours to drive. You could also go to Ticino with the train, but it takes longer. Actually that wasn´t my first time in Ticino, last time we went by train. I like to go with the train because landscapes are awesome. Train is going between the mountains and through the long tunnels. Ok, landscapes are awesome also with the car. The longest tunnel was about 17 kilometers long, if I can remember right, the name was Gotthard Road Tunnel.. Funny thing was that outside the air temperature was about 16 degrees, but in the middle of this tunnel it was about 35 degrees. Outside the weather was cloudy and it was also raining a little bit, and between these mountains, those clouds were very low.

Here´s some "through the car window" pictures from our road trip to Ticino.

Only 100 kilometers to Milano.

Arriving to Ticino

Gerra Gambarogno

After we arrived, to take that cabinet upstairs to the second floor wasn´t that hard, it was much easier than we expected, or maybe we are just so strong. Little bit later we went to a nice family restaurant, Ristorante al Portico, for a dinner. For starter I took snails, like always, and for the main course I took Cordon Bleu, for dessert I took mango sorbet und kaffee mit milch. My friend took salad, gordon bleu and ice cream, and for both we took big classes of ice tea with ice to drink.

Next morning it was time to drive back, but before that I took some early morning pictures of the lake Lago Maggiore. BTW, the most part (167 km²) of that lake is in Italy (45 km² in Switzerland). So you could swim or go by boat to visit Italy.

The view to the lake from the second floor balcony

The view to the lake from the third floor balcony

I´ve been in Italy many times, and when I came to Ticino for the first time and I saw the lake, I was thinking that it´s looking just like Garda Lake in Italy, which I also like very much. In the morning there was nice misty feeling over that lake..

So, it´s time to drive back home. Let´s hope that traffic is not so bad. In holiday seasons traffic could be very bad, because of these long tunnels through the mountains. In some tunnels there is a rule, that you have to keep 150 meters long distance to the car in front of you, but I can say that it´s almost impossible. And they are also controlling traffic with traffic lights before tunnels.. They won´t let go too much cars in to the tunnel at the same time. And an accident in the middle of the tunnel ,that´s really bad.