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France,
Italy and Switzerland, August 2002
Day
14
Thursday
came and found us up at 6:45 am and out of the hotel by 7:00 am.
We caught the 7:23 am auto ferry to Menaggio via Varenna and had our
breakfast en route, Banania with milk. In Menaggio we each had a
cappuccino and then watched fisherman catch minnows with strange fishing
poles that had no moving parts. One of the men had Parkinson's and
on several occasions we saw him catch a minnow only to lose it back to
the lake while trying to remove it from the hook.
At
8:23 am we boarded the bus to Lugano and began climbing the hills.
The ride was very pretty and lasted one hour, including the stop at the
border where we were the only people on the bus to have our passports
checked. In Lugano, only having euros and not Swiss francs, we had
to skip the funicular ride up the hill to the train station and instead
used our feet. Once at the station we were shocked to find that a
ticket to Paris was 145 per person. Of course we thought it was
euros at first but even after the conversion it was still about 100
euros each for a seat on a second-class slow train (we were hoping for
the TGV). We should have known better, but you remember this,
trains in France and Italy are cheap. Trains in Switzerland are
expensive. We should have gone back to Milan from Bellagio but I
had my sights set on the silly senic bus ride from Menaggio to Lugano.
Ask your mother, I can be a focused at times and not see the forest for
the trees.
Not
wanting to go all the way back to Milan, we bought the tickets for the
slow second-class train and then had 1-1/2 hours to kill before we left.
Being superior picnickers I think we are a bit more than just
superior, how about amazingly excellent, we headed straight for the
grocery store and bought about 10 pounds worth of food and other
assorted items including: a Swiss army knife, a can of broad beans, a
can of corn, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh mozzarella, three
tomatoes, one onion, one lemon, two bananas, 200 grams of ham, 100 grams
of salami, one small tube of mayonnaise, one small tube of mustard, two
croissants, two hard rolls, one bunch of grapes and one small pack of
candy in preparation for our nine-hour trip. With these supplies,
we made (or I watched and helped your mother when I could) a salad of
the broad beans, corn, cheese and tomatoes in the train station and used
the lemon to flavor our water.
The
bus ride earlier in the day was nice but the first three hours of the
five-hour train ride from Lugano to Basil via Luzern was spectacular!
We snuck into an almost empty first class car but got ejected back to
second class by the conductor; I think we may have gotten away with it
had he not seen me with my feet on the seat across from me. No
problem though, back in second class, which was also empty, we all of
our salad and had ham and cheese croissants.
In
Basel we had a half hour layover in which we had to switch trains.
In the process we walked by a Migros (grocery store) that your mother
looked longingly at but I held firm. Hi,
hello? The last time we were at a Migros, we walked out with no
less than 10 chocolate bars. This IS, after all, SWITZERLAND, the
land of milk chocolate!
Once
at the correct platform we discovered the train was already there and as
luck would have it, we once again had our own compartment for the 5-hour
ride back to Paris. Once the train started moving we snacked a bit
more, consuming hard roll sandwiches with salami, ham, cheese and tomato
and later breaking out the Milka bar. During the long ride I
finally finished The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher and
used the privacy of the compartment to its full extent.
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