Lugano
On day four of our trip in Switzerland we left the Appenzell District and drove two hours South to the Canton of Ticino, the Italian speaking region of the country. We left after breakfast and arrived in Lugano, before midday.
Lugano is a fairly large city built within a picturesque landscape. It's situated along a glacial Lake that shares its name and is tucked away amongst the foothills of the Alpine mountain range. The town is clean and colorful and busy and definitely has a cosmopolitan sort of feel about it.
One of the first things that we did on our arrival was buy some delicious Gelato, which we ate while taking a leisurely stroll through the inner city streets, just off the water. During our walk I noticed that there were an awful lot of fancy boutique stores selling high end brand names and I quickly got the impression that shopping was probably the biggest draw to the city.
Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Omega and Rolex were just a few of the stores I remember seeing. Shopping isn't our thing at all though, so this aspect of town didn't really appeal to us.
The weather that day was quite cloudy with some light drizzle when we first arrived. A little later on we got some partial sun coming through here and there, which was nice considering how little sun we've been getting this year. It was also a bit humid that day but that seems pretty standard for the country in the summer. Humidity is basically par for the course when you're surrounded by lake water.
Other than the gelato, our favorite part about the city was its long lakefront walking path. It's lined with trees and located along the edge of the water. It was a great spot to enjoy the views of the surrounding area.
We stopped and sat in one of the benches located along the path and spent some time looking out over the water. It really was a beautiful location, even despite the cloudy weather conditions.
While walking the path we came across this bust of George Washington. Apparently Washington had never been to Lugano but a Swiss entrepreneur from the city had made a fortune in America and had the statue built in honor of the "Land of opportunity" across the ocean. Even with the explanation the monument seems a bit strange to me.
Further down the trail is a really nice park which several other statues and art installations. My favorite was the whale in the photograph below. It played a really calming music that I think was whale song if I'm remembering correctly.
One of the last things that we did in town was climb a tall set of stairs that connect the upper town from the lower part of the city.
It didn't seem like there was anything worth checking out in the upper part of town, so we just stood up there for a bit to take in the view from a different perspective.
After the stair climb we headed back down and eventually made our way back to our vehicle which was located in an underground parking garage. We ended up having an issue when trying to leave
because there were no signs anywhere in the garage that gave direction on where to pay for parking. We didn't pass a payment machine on our way down the stairs so I assumed we could pay by card at the exit. Of course I was wrong in that assumption and had to throw on my 4 ways and back out of the exit que. My wife spent 10 minutes walking up and down every stairwell trying to find the payment machine while I waited in the car off to the side trying not to block exiting traffic.
After giving up in her search and returning to the car a good samaritan helped us out by telling us that the machine was located outside next to an adjacent building. "Dear parking garage company, if you are not going to far payment on exit an option and if you're going to hide your payment machine from your customers, you should at least put up signs telling them of its location!!!"
Anyway, we eventually got out of there and everything was good after that.
Locarno
Locarno was our next destination for the day and the place that we would spend two nights before making our way back to a more central part of the country.
Locarno is a resort city located about an hours drive north of Lugano. The city is a little bit smaller than the previous one but its also on a Lake which makes it feel very similar. I guess that's not all that surprising given that both cities are located on a lake and are surrounded by rolling foothills.
Locarno also has a walking path along the water and we went for a 45 minute walk along the path shortly after our arrival. Lake Maggiore is a lot bigger than Lake Lugano, which I didn't realized until after we had started our journey. At one point I thought that we had already walked around 1/3 of the entire lake so I asked my wife if she wanted to try and walk around the entire thing before supper. Looking out over the water I pointed back to where we had started saying, "see, we're almost half way already." Then I Google mapped the location and realized that the lake actually narrowed and curved around a bend and continued on for quite some distance and at that point I realized that we were actually less than an 8th of the way around the lake. It was a good thing that we didn't press on and try to complete the circuit. That wouldn't have went well.
The walk was quite nice though overall. We passed the harbor and went through a park and there were several nice slots along the way that looked out over the water.
I think that the harbor was our favorite though. We walked by it each night after dinner.
It was nice admiring all of the high end boats and sailboats. The phrase "resort town" and money, basically go hand in hand and I don't think that Locarno is any different.
Locarno's main claim to fame though is its annual international film festival and by chance we just happened to be there when it was taking place. That may have explained why all of the Hotels in the city were so damn expensive!
We didn't buy tickets for any of the events but we did walk through the main plaza where they were being hosted that night, while on our way to supper. We saw the red carpet and the chair set up before the entire area was closed off to visitors for the evening who hadn't paid to be there. I don't know what celebrities were in attendance this year but it was neat being a part of the buzz within the city.
My Takeaway
When searching for places to visit in Switzerland the cities of Lugano and Locarno show up on nearly every list of "must see," towns. This was the main reason why we chose them as destinations for our vacation. What I liked about the cities were the colorful buildings and the picturesque surroundings. It's hard not to like the scenery of a lakeside town surrounded by beautiful mountains.
However, my wife and I recently concluded that we aren't big city people and we definitely aren't shoppers. So although we enjoyed our walks along the water, we didn't really feel that there was much for us to do in either of the towns.
The Canton of Ticino also posed a challenge for us in terms of its geography. Its quite far from where we live in France and also out of the way from the other destinations we visited in the country, which meant that it added quite a bit of driving time for our overall vacation.
I also had a similar experience to that of Stein am Rhein in that Ticino did not correspond to my romanticized and stereotyped view of the country as a whole. To me it didn't feel like Switzerland at all, but more like I was in a city in Northern Italy.
I am quite glad that we went to Lugano and Locarn, but I think that it was more to scratch them off the list of places to visit than my overall enjoyment for them as destinations. So given that Ticino is quite far, it didn't feel like Switzerland for us and there just wasn't much for us to do or see in the big city, sadly we probably wouldn't ever go back. I guess it just wasn't our cup of tea for this particular trip.