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Wednesday 28th.July 2010 (Temperature
28˚C)
We left Interlaken and headed towards Laguno, Switzerland. Tony the bus
driver seemed happy to take us over the Susten and St Gotthard passes
rather taking the autobahn. The scenery was spectacular and we had a
number of photo stops along the way.
We arrived at the Hotel de la Paix
in Lugano at about 2:00pm and checked in. We have very nice rooms, but
once again the internet must be paid for at a rate of 15 Swiss franks
(A$20) per 3 hours. Just before 3:00pm we went on a boat ride on Lake
Lugano. It was actually on a local ferry and so we stopped briefly at a
number of small lakeside villages and picked up and dropped off
passengers. Many of the lakeside buildings were very picturesque.
We arrived back in Lugano just after
4:00pm. This is how it looks in the brochure (below)
Thursday 29th.July 2010 (Temperature
˚C)
We slept well and had breakfast on the terrace outside. The breeze was
warm and the sky overcast. But during breakfast there was a clap of thunder
above us which seemed ominous for the weather conditions ahead.
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At 9:30am our guide,
Elisabeth, took us on a walking tour of Lugano, and began by
explaining the change of architecture found so close to the
Italian border.
The style of
many of the older buildings was Italian or Ticino, with flatter roofs
and walls more of a terracotta colour. |
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The first stop was at the Church of Saint Maria degli Angioli. This is an
insignificant little church but inside there is a well conserved fresco
from the 16th. century which was painted by Bernardino Luini, a disciple
of Leonardo da Vinci, in 1529 and depicts the crucifiction. The church
is the last remains of an old nunnery. The fried egg looking photo is
actually one of the windows of the church viewed from the inside. The
church is now used for small concerts etc..
We moved through the shopping
district and up to the Cathedral San Lorenzo. This is another church
with a lavish interior and where cameras are not to be used inside!.
We then wandered around the town
taking photos as the clouds gave way to bright sunshine. However by the
time we made it back to the hotel the clouds began rolling in again through the valleys and by 2:30pm
there was a thunderstorm and it began to rain. However it was fine again
an hour later.
We had dinner at a local pizzeria. The pizzas were 16.00 Swiss franks
(A$20.00) and a 500 ml beer was 6.50 Swiss franks (A$7.50).
Friday 30th.July 2010 (Temperature
28˚C)
Today was the last official day of the tour. We set off from Lugano at
about 10:00am and crossed into Italy, arriving in Como at about 11:00am.
We did a short walking tour to the white marble Basilica San Fedele.
They seemed very concerned about the dress code inside the cathedral but
didn't seem to worry too much about us and the hoards of Japanese
tourists taking photos. It seemed rather strange wandering around taking
photos while the parishioners prayed and some sought confession from a
priest sitting quietly in a wooden alcove.
Outside again, we wandered around
the streets taking photos. But it seemed that every street junction was
a photo opportunity.
We had some lunch and joined the bus
again at 1:30pm. Tony, the bus driver, once again showed great skill and
patience as he guided the bus along the narrow road from Como around the
edge of Lake Como to our hotel in Tremezzo. Many parts of the road were
only just wide enough for car and bus to pass each other, particularly
in some of the villages.
The Hotel Bazzoni is on the lake
front and is quite comfortable. The photo above (the one at the centre
bottom), looking across the lake
towards a village, was taken from our balcony. Our room has air
conditioning, but it doesn't work so we opened the door to the balcony
and hoped for a breeze to come in off the lake below. The fan supplied
had a timer on it and needed to be re activated ever two hours, which
was very frustrating during the night. The hotel also has
a two person lift, but it is slow and it is quicker to walk the 4 levels
of stairs to our room.... and there is no WiFi connection in the rooms
but chargeable WiFi down near the reception area. One can
buy internet time on the computer at a rate of €1.50
(A$2.25) for 15 minutes. Tremezzo seems quite expensive with freshly
squeezed orange juice €6.00 (A$9.00) beside the lake and the standard
price for a soft drink in Como, such as Fanta (333mls), was €2.50
(A$3.75). The good thing about the hotel was the copious quantities of
good quality food in the self serve restaurant/ breakfast area.
Saturday 31st.July 2010
Our transfer to the Milan airport was at 1:00pm, but the hotel staff
asked us to vacate the room just after 11:00am, although we had been
told that the room was ours until 1:00pm. Once again Tony showed great
patience and driving skill as he guided the bus along the narrow and
often crowded road during the 1¼ hour trip
to Milan. We bade farewell to Elisabeth, Tony and the rest of the party
and went our own ways.
I then had to do battle with the "check in machine." First it asked for
our passports but said it couldn't read them and didn't advise us that
it needed our booking reference number instead. With the help of a young
Lufthansa attendant we overcame the problem and printed out our boarding
passes for as far as Singapore. When we checked our luggage in with a
real person, she tore up the machine created boarding passes and
replaced them with 3 new passes for our 3 connecting flights all the way
home. However the drama continued when we realised that Briar's boarding
pass for the Frankfurt to Singapore leg didn't have a seat allocation printed on it and
we found there was already
someone sitting in the seat allocated to me. Thankfully the cabin
crew quickly sorted out the mess and found us two seats together. We had an 8
hour stop over in Singapore on Sunday afternoon and met up with our friends, Sue & Roger and
had an early tea together in Singapore. Our flight departed from Changi's No. 3 terminal at just before midnight. This is a new terminal
and has polished marble and glass everywhere. The duty free shopping
area is probably larger than that in Terminal 2 which is where we have
shopped previously. The duration of this return journey, Milan to Adelaide,
including stop overs will be about 30 hours
Some thoughts
about Europe
• Cars drive on the right hand side of the road. Pedestrians
should "Look to the left, then to the right and
then to the left
again."
• Hotels and houses will need to install air conditioning
in the future as the summer temperatures rise.
•
The internet is rarely free for hotel guests. One needs to buy
time from a provider such as T-Mobile
and sometimes the usage is
charged in 15 minute blocks rather than by the minute.
•
There are solar collectors all over southern Germany. On house
roofs, factories, even banks of them
beside the roads and autobahns.
Solar and wind power appears to be a viable option here.
•
Hotel lifts should be larger. Most seem to carry only two
people and their suitcases and are often
quite slow.
• Many hotels supply "detergent" for bathing rather than
soap; it doesn't lather .. it just cleans.
• Germany is the home of the "Shicky - Micky" (Shicky =
Chic and Micky = from Munich) and refers
to a trendy young blonde female driving a BMW sports car. A term
used by our guide Elisabeth.
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By the number of
files I have downloaded, I have taken over 3,100 photos during the trip,
and that doesn't include the number I have deleted. Most were taken
using my Canon 24 -105mm f/4 lens and perhaps 5 - 10% (certainly most of
the interior photos) with the Tokina 11 - 16mm f/2.8 wide angle lens.
The only time I used the 70 - 200mm lens was to photograph the bears in
Bern. |
