Contra Dam - Verzasca River - Ticino

Happy New Year 2016 !!

On thursday 31.12.2015, in the last day of 2015, we did something nice with my wife. We took a bus to the Contra Dam. Contra Dam (also known as the Verzasca Dam or the Locarno Dam) is an arch dam on the Verzasca River in the Val Verzasca of Ticino, Switzerland. Contra Dam was constructed between 1961 and 1965, the height of the dam is 220 meters and it's the fourth tallest dam in Switzerland. I wanted to visit especially this dam because of the 20 years old movie. The dam became popular after "James Bond" jumped off it in the opening scene of the film GoldenEye in 1995.

Tourist season is over, so we were alone most of the time, which was nice. Weather was quite misty and temperature about +5 degrees.

It is huge.. From the distance, you can't imagine the size of it, and pictures can't tell you much. But when you are on the top of it and you look down, you'll notice the size. I was amazed. And this dam is barely in top 50 world wide, if you compare the heights of the dams.

That is (about) the view James Bond (British stuntman Wayne Michaels) saw, when he jumped off, 20 years ago.

You can also experience that view if you want. A company called Trekking Outdoor Team is doing Bungy Jumps in Contra Dam. Prices between 195-255 CHF. Now they are in the winter break till the end of march 2016, but you can do online bookings already.

In the other side of the dam is a "man made" lake called Lago di Vogorno.

The dam supports a 105 MW Verzasca Hydroelectric Power Station and generates an average of 234 GWh annually.

And because we didn't want to wait almost two hours for the next bus, we walked back down. It took only about one hour to walk, and it was nice way to burn some Christmas calories too. Well it didn't actually help much, because we went straight to a restaurant in Locarno to eat some Asian food :-)

After all it was a nice day and a great place to visit.

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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.