Splendide Royal Lugano

... hill to the Volta Lighthouse. If it wasn't for the foggy view we would have had a great panoramic view of Lake Como and it's surrounds.
After walking back down to Como we caught the bus out to Belaggio which is at the furthest point on the lake. Town was completely dead. a couple of cafes and post card shops open and that was it!
Some nice ...

When I finally found Lake Como (after a train, then a bus, then a ferry and then a very confusing walk) I was surprised that it was so empty. It was raining (I think the rain is following me around Europe) and there was no one about so I was able to do my exploring easily. Lake Como is a very small place with not too many things to ...

... to go out in the cold again, so then we spent time on YouTube until they got home and made us dinner. Ah, the Italian life. Meghan and I crawled into our beds but didn't sleep for a long time, just talking. We both thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of speaking normally, without adjusting our language to make ourselves understood. She had been accepted that day into an English teaching program in China, and wasn't sure if she wanted to take it or not, so we talked ...

... quaint with beautiful villas. We walked the gardens of the Melza Villa. The canons in the photos are not toys....they are from the Napoleonic period...used to defeat Milan. The keys are to the city of Milan from the 1700's.

The food here is terrific. We travel back to Milan tomorrow to pick up our friends and head to the villa in Montanione. Forecast is for thunderstorms...yeah!

Love,
R ich and Kara

... br>
Sue

We transferred from the bus to a boat to do the tour of the Lake. They pointed out the particular houses of royalty and film stars - and how many millions their houses were worth. The views were spectacular, the houses really like castles, and they would have no trouble having privacy, that's for sure! Another wonderfully pleasant surprise! Some have their own cable-cars to get down to the water's edge. (Funicular)

... Italian. Eventually I did return to reality, but not until after we visited Swiss Miniatur and San Salvatore. Swiss Miniatur is more or less self-explanatory, but I will say it was really cool to visit as a Swiss resident. It gave me and my friend some great ideas for future trips in the country. There are so many castles we never even knew existed! They really captured the great sites and monuments of Switzerland, including mountain ...

... with Karen, our Tauck guide. She gave us a good overview of the city so we would know where things are and how to work the bus ticket machine, if we wanted to go outside the walking distance of the town. We followed a short tour that Fodor’s had in the guidebook, had lunch and then walked back to the boat dock for an excursion to Morcote. This was a long boat ride—almost two hours. One of the popular stops is Gandria, a fishing village. Here, the locals have ...

... on the Sunday and it appeared that not visiting Como was a blessing in disguise as lam now relaxed and tanned travelling home on my last journey through the magnificent Swiss Alps and going a spectacular route surrounded by Alps, waterfalls at every turn, tiny perched villages and chalets clinging to the huge cliffs plunging to the aqua river below....your usual basic Switzerland scenery! I am trying to soak it all up while its still light out and lam using my Gleis 7 pass ...

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)
< br>With Italy to the south, we instead continued east along the Oberalppass. It was fun to drive, though not as memorable as the Sustenpass, and on getting to the bottom at the limits of the small town of Disentis/Mustér I was requested to pull over at a police caravan set up at the roadside. I had not remembered the speed limit outside towns for all roads, other than motorways, in Switzerland was always 80km/h ...

Ciao Everyone, Well we jusst came down from the Alps. I have a screaming sinus infection which was great when combined with the asthma at over 8,000 feet. We were at Guesthouse Aescher in Ebenalp. It was a monestary built into the side of a cliff. The whole back wall of the place is the mountain. It was like being in Heidi. We took the cable car up to the top with only a change of undies. We hiked down through a ...