The imperfect storm, our day in Lugano

Not so sunny a day!

I started my last entry on this blog with a lot of words about the weather so I'm a little hesitant about writing about the weather today but if you had a day like we had you'd be out building an ark!! We woke up to a very very cloudy day, similar to yesterday but decided it wasn't going to keep us lazing around the house. Denis, by the way, didn't make an appearance until about 10:30am, a result of setting his alarm and waking up four or five times a night to check the Dodger score nine time zones away. He's got a real problem but that's another story. Anyway we decided that a nice leisurely drive over the mountain to Lugano, Switzerland was in order. I suggested we take an obscure route over the mountain behind us and return the "normal" way, to make it a scenic round trip. Joan and Denis agreed it would be a nice drive. Lugano is a beautiful lake side city in the extreme south of Switzerland only 40 Kilometers from our rental home here in Mezzegra. I'll leave it to the reader to "Google" Lugano for further details. Off we go, around noon. heavy clouds but no rain (yet!) The cut through the mountains was a bit surprising as I had anticipated very few buildings, homes or commercial but we soon found that there were numerous small nondescript towns every few kilometers, either hanging off the side of a cliff or burrowed back in some tiny canyon. Very charming but very strange. Although it was still not 1:00pm night was falling. (keep in mind that it doesn't get dark until after 9:30 PM here). The drive continued on! We left Italy with only a perfunctory nod from the boarder guards and entered Switzerland with no boarder guards in sight! We were definitely on one of my favorite obscure mountain roads. Getting darker!!!!!!! We cruised on down a racer's delight road with plenty of hairpin turns, switchbacks and hard braking. I tried to take it easy as I did not want Denis "Leroying" out the back side window! Finally down the mountain, on to a Swiss freeway and a quick few kilometers and we were almost to the center of Lugano. "why does everyone have their lights on and why are all the street lights on and, incidentally where is the lake (as the water lapped at our ankles)? We found a great parking spot (by braille) and parked right on the lake promenade. Now it's night at 1:00PM!! We have a quick lunch and watch the people walk by and THEN the sky opens up and it starts raining to such a degree that it would have gotten Noah's attention!! We had wanted to take a long leisurely walk after lunch in the old downtown area, which is architecturally very beautiful but now stocked with modern upscale boutique stores where you can drop twenty thou on a watch if you're so inclined . Big problem now. Rain coming down so hard, looks like midnight, streets starting to flood and, of course, we're in our obligatory shorts and Polo Shirts. Ha, but we thought ahead and each had a 24" umbrellas so we stayed relatively dry. It's a good thing there was a six foot overhang on the buildings. It was time to give up and head home. We swam to the car and headed back to Mezzegra, via Menaggio. You have never seen such rain. Really too bad because I had been on this particular drive before and it is very beautiful. We paralleled Lake Lugano past beautiful scenic spots , up over a mountain and then back down the other side with vista views of Lake Como. With sheets of rain and hard hail we saw nothing!! We drove about 25mph, at tops, trying to keep the car from aquaplaning off the side of the road! On and on until we literally got back to the rental house. Except for the experience of almost dying in a 500ft plunge off the side of the road in the pitch black at 3:30PM the day was kind of a wash out. Back in time for a nap though.

Ciao,

Gene