SWISS-ITALIA , Part 6 (Oct 2015)

Well, better late than never resuming this trip report. I had hand surgery over the winter and am finally 100%, plus the glitches with Photobucket were time consuming, but they seem to have been fixed and uploading photo's is easy once again.

We left off in Part 5, returning to Lugano, Switzerland after an amazing long 3 day weekend in Cinque Terra, Italy. Our daughter was studying abroad with 40 other Virginia Tech students and their school Franklin University was in Lugano. Lugano is a wonderful place, plenty of history and culture, great cafes, outstanding restaurants and the mountain lake is more than beautiful. We had 3 days to visit with our daughter enjoying breakfast with her each morning and evenings after class and actually walked her to school one morning!











We stayed at the Continental Park Hotel and our daughters dorm The Monterossa Hotel/Hostel was attached to this property (many photos in Part 1). We spent our days walking the city waiting for our daughters classes to end, lots of steep hills around this ancient town. We ventured out a bit and found ourselves in Paradiso. We caught a FUN-icular to the top of Monte San Salvatore towering at 912 meters. Once at the top we climbed to the highest perch atop an old church. We enjoyed a 360 degree view under clear blue skies seeing parts of the Italian mountainside and the Swiss Alps, incredible.













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On another day our daughter walked us around her jogging course along the lake passing beautiful parks, hotels and great little pubs. On the far end of town we rode another funicular to the top of Mt. Bre. The weather was a little dreary but we enjoyed ourselves. There's a small restaurant at the top of Mt. Bre and only the owner was there. He said he was closed but offered us a table next to the inviting wood stove and prepared a nice coffee and hot chocolate for us. We found the people on our travels to be very nice and generous.

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We really enjoyed walking around the clean streets of Lugano, listening to everyone speaking primarily Italian. It is a busy city and has come a long way since its first settlers during the stone age. Population is 70-some-thousand, but it never really felt crowded. With all of the exercise we were getting we found ourselves stopping for routine snacks of perfectly prepared brick oven thin crusted pizza, Swiss chocolate, gelato and of course the occasional glass or three of beer or wine!

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It was fun to meet many of the amazing Virginia Tech students during our short visit. My daughter developed incredible lifelong friendships here and also when they moved on to Rwanda to do their field studies. I sure wish I had these opportunities when I was her age! The "kids" were so great they even invited us along on a field trip of sorts....BUNGY JUMPING!! We tagged along with 20 some of the adventurous students as they masterfully timed boarding a train headed for Giubiasco. From there we hopped a bus that snaked its way up the mountain side towards the Verzasca Dam. Venturing onto the dams walkway the students excitement was noticeable, many could be heard saying Shhhhiiiiiiiiiit!. The skies were blue, the air was crisp and the views were absolutely breath taking. My wife and I were simply observers thank god, but we documented everybody's jump on camera. On the platform many students were wide eyed straight faced unable to look down at the 220 meters they were about to travel, ON A STRING! Our daughter was all smiles when her toes extended beyond the platforms plank, then she bent her steady knees and launched letting out a yell that I'll never forget. Leaning against the rail my head followed the camera over the edge and captured this crazy stunt, my stomach did somersaults the whole 7 second free fall. Did I mention.....CRAZY!!

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The entire trip back to Lugano was filled with laughter and a feeling that they had confronted their fears head on and took the leap of faith, actually many had no fear in their eyes what so ever, concerning? maybe! They are truly living life! It was on this trip that I realized that I no longer had full control over my daughter's life, it was on this trip that I realized she was soaring into maturity and I was resolved in her independence!

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We spent the evening with a few of the girls drinking nice wine and discussing their next leg of the journey in Rwanda. The next morning brought sadness when we kissed our daughter and said our farewells. With tears in our eyes and an additional suitcase of stuff our daughter no longer needed we quietly walked to the train station. We were heading to Interlaken to see what the Swiss Alps have to offer.......to be continued, CIAO!

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