Some pics from last Sunday

We did go for a ride last Sunday, but sadly the weather here was rather uninspiring (I read with envy about the lovely sunny autumn weekend in England...). Due to general murkiness, we did not take many pictures, but here are a few:



Scenery hidden in murkiness









Wasp-man on a bridge taking pictures of scenery and art...




An interesting piece of art on a bridge - passers-by can make him "pedal" with the leaver coming down from his foot.

On the way there and back, we cycled past this steam train place, which seems to be made for grown men to sit on tiny trains going round in a circle.  I was slightly worried to see on our way home that there were a number of men still sat on the same little train going round in a circle that they had been sitting on our our way out a couple of hours earlier.... but I am not entirely sure, they may work there and get paid to do this?



Now this bit DOES look like fun even to me



No pictures, for once

I have no interesting photos to upload, but wanted to post a quick update of what we're up to anyway.  Last weekend I spent a couple of days in Zurich with my mum - we had a lovely time and Zurich was brilliant as always.  Nice weather, lots of good shops, generally friendly people and excellent food. My favourite place for nice restaurants is still Heidelberg, but Zurich comes a close 2nd.  If only things were not quite as expensive... nonetheless, I really like Zurich.  Just don't look at the price of anything ... 
Back to our Southern world: The weather down here in Ticino is somewhat unreliable at the moment, we still have the odd nice day, but autumn is definitely on its way.
Today we went to Lugano to do some shopping (for work clothes and some household things we needed) and were rather successful, so looks like Lugano is the place to go for shopping here.
I had a brief but interesting conversation with an American tourist here, I'd say college age.  He told me they were on holiday here, in Lugano this morning, going to Como this afternoon and Milano tomorrow.  Then he shrugged and said "well, there's not much to do here so we're trying to string it out as much as we can".
I wish I had that problem, what with work keeping us rather busy during the week...  For tomorrow our plan is to go out on the tandem, which arrived here safely after the usual fun and games with customs ... so fingers crossed for nice weather, and maybe a few nice photos tomorrow too.

Last Weekend

On Saturday we went to a colleague's wedding which involved lots of balloons and a wrapped car...

Getting ready to let the balloons go



Each balloon has a postcard with the "sender" address - the idea is that people who find the balloon send back the postcard and the person whose balloon went furthest wins.



We also learnt that it is a tradition here to play a joke on the groom, for example by wrapping his car in kitchen roll...

Sunday we went for our first proper bike ride, which involved quite a big climb which got us about half way up the mountain. 

On the way home back down in the valley Andy discovered an interesting warning sign by the river:

"

Last Sunday

Sunday we went for a walk to "Castle 3".  This is what it looked like en route and at the castle.


How to grow your kiwis




Basking in the autumn sun





Halfway there... Ticino being humid and hazy as most of the time



I cheated on this picture and corrected the colours to get rid of the haze...



Nice restaurant in the castle

Looking down on Bellinzona

Tunnel Building

There is a project underway in Switzerland to build some more tunnels, so trains from Zurich to Italy (Milan) don't have to go OVER the Alps but can go through, which will cut a fair amount of time off the journey.  The famous Gotthard, of course, is part of this project, but there are also some smaller mountains being tunnelled. Last Saturday or local bit of to-be-built tunnel had an open day, and we could not resist the temptation of visiting a traintunnel-in-the-making. 
It was beautifully done, as you'll see from the pictures a lot of effort has gone into presentation for the open day and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  The atmosphere down in the tunnel, with rows upon rows of big machines on display, was very surreal... we figured the whole site might well double up as the setting for a sci-fi movie a la Alien. Make up your own mind - here are a few pictures.



The whole open day was set up with love, as these pictures show



Simply impressive (...whatever it is...)



We were not the only interested guests...



Welcome to the Ceneri tunnel



Here be diggers... and their friends.



VERY big machines...





Definitely Alien-esque machines.



And very clever machines too...



Heavy Plants Clubbing ?

 

A liked the warning signs on the machines.





M liked the Mesh





Locarno Triathlon

Today we went to Locarno, where Andy took part in a team-triathlon with 2 colleagues. No points for guessing which bit Andy did.


Here are some pictures:

Monica before her 20km run, waiting for Andy to come in...

Race Village

.... and here he is .... (after 80km ride)

Describing how horrid the final twisty descent was with a flat front tyre to Georg and his 2 daughters (who all speak fluent German, Italian and English !!!)

Glad to be back but sad to have missed some of the fun of the final descent due to a puncture.

And here's Monica, back from her 20 km run and looking amazingly fresh !

Where Swiss Pilots Train

This morning, just outside our flat we saw one of these:

"Nice" we thought and happily went our separate ways for the morning - Andy to Locarno to register for a bike race and me down to the laundry room in the basement to work my way through the large pile of ironing.
Increasing plane noise eventually made me glance out of the tiny basement window, and lo! and behold, the plane had come back with some of its friends:

So it would appear that we live where Swiss pilots come for their training :-)

I quickly unplugged the iron and ran upstairs in the hope of seeing a bit more - and I certainly did.

And off they went.... The planes were followed by a helicopter - I never knew they can fly backwards.
Just after the helicopter left Andy came home - just in time for the faster and noisier planes:

All the pictures are taken from our balcony - we think we got a pretty good free airshow !