On this leg of the journey, we left the sunny and warm French Riviera and headed to Switzerland and Northern Italy. We checked the weather and it still appeared that this area was forecasted to have nice Fall daytime temperatures around 63°F. We initially planned to stay at 3 different campgrounds throughout this area, but at the last minute we changed our minds and decided to stay in Lugano for the entire week and use that city as our hub. As the train systems are vast and efficient, we felt we could get everywhere we had planned to go using public transportation from Lugano. In addition to visiting Lugano, we visited several surrounding areas including Gandria and Morcote and took a day trip to Lake Como, Italy.

Lugano, Switzerland: We had a 5-hour drive from Nice, France to Lugano, Switzerland. The roads out of Nice were “corniche” style roads which means they were perched high up on ledges above the ocean. We went through more bridges and tunnels then we could count and roads that were never straight. Traffic was heavy, but road conditions were good until we passed into Italy. The roads deteriorated considerably with frequent massive chunks of asphalt missing leaving unavoidable crater sized potholes in the middle of our driving lane. The Italian drivers lived up to their reputation of being bad drivers as many (most?) were straddling multiple lanes to maintain maximum speed when going around tight turns. Use of turn signals, obeying the speed limit and maintaining your lane were all out the window now that we were in Italy. In France the tunnels were clean and lovely, but in Italy they looked crumbly and mildewy. It was a marked difference in road infrastructure between the two countries. As we started to head away from the coast going north in Italy, the traffic did thin and overall road conditions improved although the Italian driving skills did not. The good news is that our newly installed magnetic baby latches on our drawers and cabinets did the trick and we did not have any of them flying open on the turns.

Fuel is more expensive in Europe than the US, but since we don’t drive long distances we spend less than we do in the US when traveling in our other van. We decided to fill up in Italy before crossing the border into Switzerland where everything is more expensive. By mistake, we (read Tracey) accidently pulled into a full-service pump, so we paid Switzerland prices for our Italian gas, but we did get a “free” windshield wash.

We checked into a lovely smaller family campground called La Palma on Lake Lugano in the city of Agno. Pascale (that’s a women’s, not a man’s name😊), who was the owner gave us a nice pitch right on the lake. We opted for the electrical hook-up mainly so we could use it for heat. When we purchased our van, we upgraded the Truma heating system from a propane heater to a larger diesel fuel sourced heater which also provided a second standalone 1000–1800-Watt electric heating option. When we can, we use the electric heat at the campgrounds to save our expensive diesel although this is more psychological than real savings since we can run this efficient diesel heater for 24 hours on less than 1 gallon of diesel. Our friends Ron and Ton were in this area and told us about the Ticino Pass which is issued by many of the campgrounds. This pass provides free public transport not just in the immediate area as most of the other campgrounds in other parts of Switzerland do, but the Ticino Pass is good for the entire canton (about a 90 km radius) including trains, trams and buses. Also, the campground was a 4-minute walk to the train station and close to 3 grocery stores including an Aldi which we found to have the best prices and Tony thinks they have the best bakery fresh bread.

Now that we are in Switzerland, we are mainly seeing only Swiss campers with the occasional German camper. During our entire visit to Lugano, we were the only non-Swiss or non-German plated camper vehicle we saw. The Swiss are hearty people as some people were still camping in tents even though at night temperatures dropped to 45°F with high humidity and literal days of continuous rain.

Lugano City Center and Mont San Salvatore: Our first full day in Lugano was going to be our best weather day so we headed into the city center and did the Rick Steve’s city walk through their Old Town, city park and along the lakefront. There was both a cheese festival and a vintage tractor festival occurring in town so the city was bustling (in a good way). We took the funicular up to Mont San Salvatore which took us up 3,000 feet in elevation and provided 360° views of Lake Lugano, Lake District of Italy and the Alps as the skies were clear. Activities to do at the top were not very appealing so we decided to hike down to the village of Carona, but after descending on rocky, steep and wet trails for almost 45 minutes and with another 45 minutes of the same in front of us we bailed on this hike and turned around and climbed back up to the top. This hike had no views of anything and there was a strong sewage like smell most of the way. This was not the most pleasant of experiences for us. We decided to salvage the afternoon by walking to some of the paved panoramic viewing stations instead and it was a good decision as the views were even better than expected.

On our trip down in the funicular, we met a nice American family from Tulsa with 2 small children and grandpa in tow on their first vacation to Switzerland. It was nice to be able to communicate easily with others as the language barrier continues to be the most difficult part of this experience for us. We had just started getting familiar with some of the common French terms, but now that we are in Lugano the predominate language is Italian of which we know less than 5 words.

Gandria, Switzerland: Checking the weather forecast the next day, we had another clear window for some outdoor activities so we took the light rail and then a bus to the trailhead; however all did not go smoothly. There were only 2 other people on the bus and they were a lovely couple from New Jersey. We had a deep conversation with them after they shared that the wife had been recently diagnosed with a rare Stage 4 lung cancer as a non-smoker and they were traveling while she was still feeling well. She had such a positive and grateful demeanor and we found it very inspiring and meaningful to have met her. Our plan was to get off at the bus stop just before the Switzerland and Italy border. Tony was watching for our stop on Google Maps and pushed the “stop” button well before our listed stop but the bus didn’t stop and just kept going. Very quickly we were flying through tunnels and over the Italian border. Tony jumped up and approached the driver who indicated it wasn’t safe to stop for a bit further. We are not sure what happened. Were we on an express bus that didn’t stop? Did the driver not hear the stop bell being pushed? Did we need to do something else to alert the driver where we wanted to be dropped off? Who knows, but in the end we got off the bus in Italy over a mile past our desired bus stop; however we had 2 problems: 1) we did not have our passports with us and although there are no longer fixed border checkpoints between countries, there are mobile checkpoints and unlucky for us there was a mobile checkpoint at this location and 2) there was a tunnel which needed to be transversed to get back to Switzerland and there did not appear to be any type of sidewalk available. We approached the border agents knowing all we had with us were our Passport Cards (which are not official in Europe) but we must not have fit the profile for what they were looking for as they had no interest in us. Whew! We approached the tunnel hoping to find a sidewalk or some type of pedestrian access to the other side but there was none. Just a 388 m long tunnel that had 2 opposing lanes of traffic, no shoulder on either side and was completely dark without lights. Not knowing what we should do, we approached the border agent and explained our predicament and he said “You can walk through the tunnel… it is 388 m (~1/4  mile) long…but very very dangerous….but only way”. Shit! The road had a moderate level of traffic including buses, cars and trucks and the speed limit was 60 kph (~40 mph), but again there was zero, literally zero shoulder on either side of this very narrow tunnel. Additionally, the tunnel was on a curve so we could only see a small section of it when looking in. We stood at the opening of the tunnel looking for headlights and when we did not see any, we looked at each other and said RUN! We ran literally as fast as our 50+ year old bodies could go knowing this was a very stupid thing to do. To be honest, we ran faster and longer than I thought we could, but there was certainly adrenaline involved. By some stroke of luck, there was a break in traffic and we made it 100 m without any traffic in either direction. At 100 m, there started to be small indents in the side of the tunnel that were just big enough for 1 of us to press our bodies into while a car passed inches from us. So, for the next 288 m we looked for headlights and then leapfrogged our way from indent to indent all the way to the other side of the tunnel. Sometimes we could only move 1 indent to the next indent which was about 15-20 feet, sometimes we could make it 2 or 3 indents before we saw approaching headlights. This was easily one of the stupidest things we have ever done but we made it back to Switzerland safely. We were in such a state of shock and fear we started laughing at our total stupidity once we were on a real sidewalk.

The whole point of this adventure was to hike the Olive Trail from Gandria back to Lugano. We found the trailhead and it was a wonderful urban hike which started in Gandria, a small lakeside village at the foot of Mont Bre that feels like it hasn’t changed in a hundred years. The village is closed to cars and therefore is designed for wandering the cobblestone narrow streets and up and down stone carved staircases while getting the occasional glimpse of Lake Lugano. Many people have lovely courtyard gardens tucked behind stone facades but the real draw are the olive trees. Five different varieties of trees in several lakeside groves are tended to by the 700 residents of the area. The skies started to look as if a storm was approaching, so we headed back to the van and arrived just as the rain descended upon us.

Lake Como, Italy:  The next day there was another unexpected weather window so we placed Como, Italy in our sights. There are so many lovely photos online of Lake Como that we were quite excited for this day trip to experience it ourselves. We took a train into Lugano using our free Ticino pass and then purchased a ticket into Como, Italy which got us on a high-speed train that only took 30 minutes.

We arrived around 9:30 AM and the city was quite quiet so we decided to do a VoiceMap GPS guided audio tour of the city. The city itself was pleasant with its more ornate style of architecture and the tour led us down some pretty streets, but the city itself did not compare to Lugano, in our opinion. It was not nearly as beautiful, the lake looked dirty as it was a murky color and we saw some floating trash, we witnessed several of the common “bracelet” scammers looking for victims, people were just flicking their cigarette butts rights and left into the streets and there were illicit boat operators right in front of the main boat ferry terminal trying to coerce people to get into their illegal boats vs. the license boat operators. The city of Como was not living up to its nickname of being the Pearl of Lake Como for us. Overall, we felt that Como had a bit of a dirty and unsavory vibe to it and we longed for the law-abiding, clean, efficient and orderly Swiss cities.

We needed some Euros so we took this opportunity to find an ATM since Como is back in the part of the EU which uses Euros. Switzerland still uses Francs. We found an ATM, selected the English display but then we miscommunicated with each other. The screen indicated there was a 3% transaction fee AND a $3 ATM fee. I said to Tony is the “3” OK with you since we don’t normally pay fees for ATM transactions. Tony thought I was referring to the $3 ATM fee and said our bank reimburses us for those fees. He didn’t see the 3% transaction fee which was in smaller font near the bottom of the screen and is what I was referencing with my question. I assumed he saw the 3% transaction fee and he assumed I was referring to the $3 ATM fee. The saying about A-S-S-U-M-I-N-G bit us in the butt on this one. We got 500 Euros out and paid WAY too much in fees due to our miscommunication. We learned our lesson and we will be much more careful next go-around. We took the Como-Brunate funicular up 3500 feet to the town of Brunate. We were again disappointed as it was crowded with large, organized groups of tourists and tourist shops. We walked to a few of the viewpoints and although a bit better, we were just not having a great visit. We headed back down to the city and decided to try a gastropub that had a highly rated vegan burger but when we arrived we learned that it contained gluten that Tracey is allergic to. We walked around looking for a place to eat our picnic lunch we had brought as a back-up but came up short with finding any place to sit so we stood unceremoniously near the train station entrance eating our picnic lunch. Our train was on-time and we were seated next to a nice mother and her 2 children who were from St. Louis, MO but had lived in Zurich for the last 5 years. We passed the time listening to her experiences living in Switzerland as an ex-pat. Besides the cost of living, she loved Switzerland and plans to never go back to live in the US and we were quite envious of her life. Our conversation with this lady was the highlight of our day as we left Lake Como quite disappointed. We had plans for a second day trip to some of the towns further up on Lake Como to see the large villas; however we decided against this trip after visiting Como and reading these other areas are crowded and touristy which is not something we enjoy. We arrived back at the van just in time for Tony to get in a quick bike ride before a major storm approached.

Lugano, Switzerland: The major storm lived up to its forecast for once and it down poured for almost 36 continuous hours. We did not leave our van that entire time and instead did some cleaning, Tracey cooked a few meals and we watched a couple of movies. Our only entertainment was watching a 5 or 6-year-old boy from the caravan next to us play in the rain. He was outside for at least 3-4 hours splashing in the puddles, floating boats down the drainage ditches and collecting water from the roof of his grandmother’s caravan. He was decked out in galoshes and a 1-piece rain suit and seemed completely unbothered by the rain. His grandmother would come out and check on him once every hour or so, but otherwise he was left on his own and seemed to be having a spectacular time. No “helicopter” parents in Switzerland. He was a delight to watch and brightened our (rainy) day.

The following day had a fluctuating forecast with rain more likely in the morning so we took the train back into Lugano and headed to the Lugano Art Center (LAC) museum. The LAC is a beautiful and interesting modern space with 2 temporary art exhibits. The multi-modal exhibit by Johanna Kotlaris, who has won several recent awards as a break-out new artist, was intriguing. Her exhibit involved paintings, sculpture and a short movie which also included singing. The movie was completely weird and bizarre, but we both really liked it and we talked about it on and off for the rest of the day. The other exhibit was a photographer who took everyday photos of his travels around Switzerland using a film camera. It was OK, but not our favorite exhibit. Our tickets also included entrance to the nearby Palazzo Reali Museum which focuses on 15 ^th-20^th century paintings from around this region. Both museums had limited exhibits and art pieces, but we enjoyed both if not just for the gorgeous buildings they are housed in. We walked around the city again with a stop at the downtown Co-Op grocery store which has extensive options for chocolate bars. We bought another $8 bar of the best dark chocolate we have ever eaten and did not feel the least bit of guilt.

On this trip, we finally found the funicular which connects the city center to the train station. In Lugano, the train station is at the top of the city and on previous visits we walked up and down the steps and hills between the station and the city center, but on this trip we finally found the funicular which saved us some steps and time.

When we returned to the van, the weather forecast was indeed wrong as it turned out to be a lovely and sunny day. Tony did another 25-mile Kamoot loop around part of the lake and Tracey sat out on a bench on Lake Lugano. There were 5 pre-teen kids who were having the best time playing together on their paddleboards by making contests for different stunts, setting up obstacle courses and generally just laughing and having a great time. This brought back so many memories from Tracey’s childhood where kids played outside, without phones or electronics, and interacted with each other and used their imaginations.

All in all, we loved Lugano and this city has also made our short list of places we could potentially live in the future. It almost feels like every new city we go to becomes our favorite at this point. 😊 Some random thoughts about Switzerland and Lugano in general. For a city of this size (60,000 people) there is a lot of big city infrastructure in terms of transportation and services. The US suburb we live in is almost this same size and does not have a high-speed train or a downtown pedestrian-only vibrant shopping district. Cities in Switzerland are CLEAN. Besides the graffiti which I have referenced before, there is no trash on the streets, no cigarette butts flicked in the gutters, no urine smelling alleys, no grimy and dirty bus and trains as there are in the US. There are trash and recycling bins everywhere and people seem to take pride in keeping their city looking good. Lugano has a mixture of locals and tourists, but the local kids we did see, seemed to have a great quality of life where they spend a lot of time outdoors doing active, but not necessarily organized or sporting, activities. The housing is much denser than we are used to in the US. There are a lot of buildings where there are multiple units either in the form of rowhouses or condos. All the housing seems to be concentrated in a small area and not spread out over miles as is common in the US. There appears to be a lot of wealth in Switzerland based on the large number of very expensive (think Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Bentleys) that we saw during our visit. Recycling is serious business in Lugano. Trash, that is things that cannot be recycled, must be placed in specially purchased and marked bags which are about 30 L in size. Each bag costs $2-3 and includes the cost of disposal in the landfill or burning. Having to pay this much for each garbage bag certainly does encourage people (us included) to be extra diligent in recycling which is free and easy to do.

Port Tresa, Caslano and Morcote: We could have easily spent another week in Lugano, but with our planned days winding down we packed a lot into our last day. Since the train system is so efficient and easy to use, we decided to walk to the last train stop on the train line by our campsite without using any phone navigation assistance anticipating this would be 4-5 miles. We ended up on a peaceful urban walk which took us through local residential areas not frequented by tourists, through several woodland parks, along the lakefront and through the quaint seaside village of Caslano. When we got close to the end, we just followed the electrical lines for the tram to the Port Tresa station where we hopped on a train and we were back in the van in under 15 minutes.

Next, we broke out our Brompton bikes and biked to Morcote. Morcote is a picturesque village on the shores of Lake Lugano. It was a 7-mile ride to Morcote and the road was a bit busier than we would have liked, but all the cars gave us adequate berth when passing. Our little e-bikes with 16” wheels were put to the test, driving up the very steep road to the top of the city to look at the viewpoint, church and Swingoftheworld.  It was well-worth the effort and we treated ourselves to some gelato after we returned to the lakefront. This gelato wins the award for the best gelato we have ever eaten. We spoke with the owner who assured us it was indeed vegan, as he made it himself, and it was only made with 89% cocoa, sugar, vanilla, water, salt AND pepper and a bit of “tricks”. It was dreamy! Tracey paired her chocolate gelato with an equally amazing mango sorbet and Tony just went all in with an entire dish of the chocolate. We are still talking about this gelato to this day it was that good. Our return bike back to the campground was a bit more enjoyable as there was less traffic although Tracey felt a couple of road bikers who passed us were dissing our little bikes so she kicked up her pedaling and stayed on their wheel for a few miles. When they looked back they seemed a bit surprised to see a red-faced and sweaty Tracey pedaling like a mad women right on their heels.

Knowing we were leaving the next day, we used our 10% coupon that came with our Ticino Pass at the Migros grocery store which helped lower our bill, although the items that we bought were not as expensive as we had anticipated they would be. We are still on the look-out for Tracey’s gluten-free tortillas which are everywhere in Spain and France, but nowhere to be found in Switzerland. Also, several natural peanut butters can be found at most stores in France, but in Switzerland all they have is “American-style” peanut butter laden with either palm oil or 10% canola oil. It is always interesting to learn of the things we can’t find in certain places. We are easily adaptable, so we just pivot to something else that we can find locally.

The storm that occurred several days prior had stirred up a lot of plants, sticks and other organic material in Lake Lugano and it seemed to settle in front of our lakefront campground like it was our own “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. Being the clean and tidy people that the Swiss are, they have a floating machine which goes up and down the shoreline picking up all this material using a conveyor belt contraption. Tracey was mesmerized by this machine and watched this cleaning for longer than she will admit and with more enjoyment than she will admit. She is a nerd at heart.

We fit Tony’s road bike and both Bromptons inside the van under our fixed bed, but just barely. We do this for security purposes but also for maintenance reasons as nobody likes dirty bikes, rusty chains and seized bike components. Add in 2 chairs, a table, an air compressor, water hose, electrical cable, 2 bike batteries, Tony’s bike tools, 2 large Ortlieb bags AND our entire laundry hamper and it is a game of Tetris fitting it all in, in an organized manner. We spent some time rearranging the items and being more creative with using the vertical space so that it is not such a chore every time a bike needs to come in or out. We think we made some improvements, but only time will tell.

Bellinzona: When we woke up, our plan was to stop to do some laundry enroute to our final destination of Lucerne which was 2.25 hours way. This was one of those days where nothing goes right or to plan. Our drive to the laundry involved bumper-to-bumper traffic which we never could figure out the reason for (it was a Saturday morning). Waze instructed us to make a right-hand turn but as soon as we did there was a sign indicating vehicles wider than 2 meters were prohibited. We are 2.1 meters wide and we could see a very narrow 6-foot-tall concrete walled bridge over a river and then a single lane (but for 2-way traffic) beyond that. We were not feeling brave that there was any +/- tolerance with the 2-meter-wide restriction. We made a very inelegant U-turn on this very busy and narrow road and took an alternative route to the laundry. We typically use Revolution/Wash.me which are outdoor laundry facilities, usually in the parking lots of grocery stores. Both washing machines were available and we thought our day was turning around. With 2 minutes left on our washing machines, a Tesla pulled up and put a load of blankets in the one and only dryer at this facility. We waited for him to be finished and return to retrieve his blankets. When Tony put in our wet laundry, he noticed there was no heat being generated. He tried different settings but it was just cold air. He called the tech support number posted and was surprisingly connected to an English-speaking representative. In the end, they agreed to refund our money but now we have 2 loads of wet laundry and nowhere to dry them. We found another self-service laundry about 20 minutes away. We pulled in and Tony checked there was 1 of the 4 dryers available; however this facility only accepted Swiss Francs and no credit cards. We only had Euros with us. Having spent 5 minutes trying to park our van on the narrow streets of this village, Tony set out on foot in the rain to find somewhere to change Euros into Francs. Luckily, he didn’t have to go too far. With Francs in hand, we were able to eventually dry our clothes. At this point, the day had slipped away and the weather was shit. A look at the weather app showed the forecast for our destination of Lucerne had again shifted and it was going to rain for the next 18 hours; however in the area we were currently in, it was only going to rain for another hour and clear up after that. We decided to stay local and at least be dry. Tracey remembered our friends Ron and Ton had blogged about Bellinzona on their recent travels and we were only 10 minutes away from Bellinzona. We opted to stay at an Aire that was located under an underpass, even though reviews said it could be loud (note: we planned to use earplugs). We found the Aire, paid our money and decided to head out for a city walk of Bellinzona. Just as we were about to leave, 20 middle-school age kids showed up and started football (i.e. soccer) practice literally feet in front of our vehicle. They were loud, yelling, kicking the ball wildly trying to ricochet it off the concrete of the underpass, wrestling with each other on the ground and just generally being annoying. They hit the camper next to us and we were concerned they could potentially damage our van, too, so we decided to wait until they were finished. By the time they left, we were too tired to do our hike so we settled in for the night. At 7 pm, we heard yelling and shouting and saw another group of 20 kids, this time high-schooled age kids, arrive and start doing the same things as the younger kids did earlier. The older kids were even more unruly and were kicking the ball much harder. They kicked the ball hard into the hood of the campervan next to us and then ran away as the owner came outside to investigate. It appears this Aire is adjacent to a Sports Complex and the football coach is sending the kids over to the Aire for an unsupervised warm-up.

The sound of the noise as each vehicle went over the expansion joints in the roadway above us was grating on our nerves and then the unruliness of 2 sets of unsupervised kids was more than we could take. At 8 PM, past the time we like to drive as we don’t like to drive the van at night, we packed up and left. We found a city parking lot in downtown Bellinzona and parked up next to a few other campervans for the night. It was quite a crappy day where it felt like everything went wrong. The rainy weather, 2 m width road restriction, waiting for the dryer, finding the heater element broken in the dryer, having no Francs for the second dryer and having 2 sets of unruly kids in front of our van made for a crappy day, but we were determined to make the following day better.

It was a cool and clear morning and we headed out for a walk around the city of Bellinzona and to the castles with improved temperaments and attitudes. Castle Grande in Bellinzona was deserted and we walked along the ramparts and grounds without another person in sight. Again, our friends Ron and Ton, blogged about this place recently (read here for a much more elegant post about the history of this area https://travelintiger.com/2024/september-29-2024-bellinzona-su) which intrigued us to visit this area, too. Walking up and down many steps, we made our way through the city up to Montibello Castle which was perched above Castle Grande. We did not go inside the castle but spent time walking the grounds and some of the ramparts. These castles, fortifications and ramparts were some of the favorites we have toured on our travels. There was a third castle even higher on the mountain, but we did not have the energy for more climbing so we descended into the town of Bellinzona where the weekly Sunday Market was occurring. Clothing, flowers, produce, bread, cheese and food were all being sold in this busy market which extended the length of a good portion of the Old Town area. Tony bought some bread from a local artisan and gnawed ¼ of the loaf while we walked back to the van.

We could easily have spent more time in Bellinzona, but we still had a 2.25-hour drive to Lucerne ahead of us and a schedule to keep.

Onwards!

Cumulative Wildlife Spotted on this Trip: flamingos, wild boar, jellyfish, deer and storks

Short-List for a Possible Future Move: Geneva, Switzerland; Aix-en-Provence, France; Nice, France, Lugano, Switzerland

Up Next: Lucerne, Switzerland