Hi Again -
Okay, let’s keep playing catch up. It’s Monday evening and we’re at the southern end of Lake Gorda. I can tell you the lake is promoted as a great day trip from Milan. Otherwise, you got it, you might want to look it up.
You may have guessed we departed beautiful Lake Como this morning and spent the afternoon (a quick look) in Milan (Milano). Lake Gorda is 90 minutes east of Milan, about half-way from Milan to Venice. We go to Venice tomorrow.
Backing up, and hopefully eventually catching up, let’s go back to our departure from Lucerne (Luzern) last Thursday. You’ve already heard how much we enjoyed Lucerene and how German it is. Well, one of the prize tourist attractions is a trip up Mt. Platius. It’s listed at 7,000 feet and has views of Lucerne, the lake and beyond. You either take a boat or train to a small lakeside town. Well, the boat quit operating on October 20th, so we took the train. Certainly not a disappointment for me. About a 30-minute trip. We all were a little apprehensive about the trek up the side of the mountain from lakeside to the top. We made the trip on the oldest cog wheel railroad in the world. It may be the steepest, rolling in at a 60 degree angle at one point.
Photos #1 – #4 – We were high up. The train wasn’t as bad as it seemed when I was rolling around in bed the night before. The trip down was much better than going up, and you can imagine some of the views were unbelievable. The photos can’t possibly capture the majesty of the snow-covered alps. One shot is of Lucerne down below. There are two hotels at the top (who would want to stay where you have trouble breathing and you’re scared to death?). Fortunately, most of the viewing area was glassed in. You could go outside and you could walk up a gravel trail with a flimsy wood rail to an even higher point. I was at my bravest inside the glass viewing area. Sophia, Marlene and I were sitting in the glassed in area. We looked out and saw this woman higher up, outside the flimsy wooden rail, just sitting on a rock as though she was quite comfortable with falling to her death. Marlene exclaimed, “Now, all we need to do is see Keaka walking up there.” At that very moment Keaka came into view, marching up the narrow trail to within about 20 feet of the top and the woman rather poorly positioned. I exclaimed, “There he is now.” Our shock was overwhelmed by the humor of the timing. Yes, Keaka came down as if nothing unusual had happened, calmly telling us about this woman...........!
Photos #5 – #7 – Just to give you a taste, here are views from our Lake Como condo, located in Menaggio (something more for you to look up). We arrived there last Thursday and left this morning.
The trip from Lucerne to Lake Como is in the neighborhood of three hours, with plenty of high mountains, alpine villages and even more tunnels. We went through a tunnel 19 km long (about 14 miles?) which took 15 minutes. Best guess is we’ve been through ten tunnels of quite significant length. You could see the architecture change from Swiss German to Swiss Italian. Very similar to the dramatic change we saw from the Southern France architecture to the French Alps architecture (heavy Swiss influence). Boy, the Swiss have to be able to speak at least three languages to exist. Again, very clean and you can see the money the government spends. So, I presume high taxes in Switzerland. Just a very high level of living. Much as we saw in Tokyo and in Australia, a very different society. Not a huge number of rich and a notable absence of significant poverty. Thus, a huge middle class, seemingly enjoying a comfortable standard of life, though a lower standard than most of us enjoy in the United States. Folks in France, Switzerland and Italy (where we’ve been) certainly do not have large homes like you see so often in the U.S., most families seem likely to have no cars or one car, rather than two, and mass transit is how a huge percentage of people get around. Cities of 250,000 commonly have extensive mass transit (heavy rail).
Somehow we missed the memo about Switzerland not being part of the European Union. So, being well stocked with Euros didn’t help much in Switzerland, where the Franc continues to rule. The Swiss attitude, we were told, is that Switzerland didn’t want to be in a position of having to support other countries. Thus, they are glowing about the situation of Greece looking to Germany to support it.
