Lugano Again

On Sunday, we went to Switzerland again. Mr A still needed some clothes for skiing, so we stopped off at the Foxtown outlet centre. Mr A got a North Face jacket for 100 euros. He was happy to have the jacket, and I, as his tight Scottish girlfriend (as he likes to remind me), was glad on his behalf that he got such a bargain.

After that, we went up to Lugano for a walk around the lake so that I could get my fix of nice views and fresh air. Lugano is beautiful, with a turquoise lake, gorgeous grand hotels on the promenade and snowy mountains behind it, and the air was definitely less polluted than in Milan. The town is so clean and organised looking that it seems really strange when you hear Italian spoken around you. Just like in Milan, the people are incredibly well dressed, but combined with tidiness of the setting, it creates a sense of perfection that's almost unnerving. Nevertheless, Mr A and I both decided that Switzerland would be a very nice place to live, and you're never too far from the more flawed countries over the border!

Lugano

I went to Switzerland on Sunday. For the day. Or, more precisely, for the afternoon.
We were originally planning to go to Lake Maggiore but by the time we got around to leaving it was too late for that, so we picked a random place off the map and, despite having neither passports nor Swiss money, we headed for the border. (I met some people who went to Lugano by accident once. They got on the bus on the shores of Lake Como, missed their stop, wondered why their passports got checked and only realised what had happened when they ended up in an incredibly clean town that was full of banks and shops selling cuckoo clocks.)


When we got there, we went for a walk by the lake, admired Rolexes in the windows of the incredibly expensive shops (Lugano is like Milan for people who are too exclusive to face the plebs and pollution), ate pizza, thought about getting the very long funicular up one of the mountains, decided it was too long to wait and too expensive and drove up the mountain, and went for another walk.

Once again, the pictures really don't do it justice, but hey, I can go back any time I want...