Chocolate, Watches and Logs

Switzerland, to the uniniated, means chocolate, watches and trains etc.....

There was a lot of talk a few weeks about the Lugano Chocolate Festival.

There were posters on the side of the road, adverts in the papers, it was an exciting (ish) topic of conversation at work. 

So, last Saturday we thought we'd do the tourist thing and check it out because a festival of swiss chocolate just has to be very exciting.............

 The Swiss Chocolate Festival. All of it.
 It displayed all the same chocolate you buy in the convenience (and warmth) of a supermarket but at twice the price.
We did however buy some chocolate. It was very nice and came from Belgium.

Lugano is quite a nice shopping town as it has shops that open all day with marginally helpful and friendly staff  (by Ticino standards) and generally has a good vibe about it. There is also a huge amount of money......



.....the shop name should be in inverted commas as it's exactly what you say when you see the price of some of their goods...



"CHRIST"

Switzerland is also renowned for its engineering prowess and quite rightly too.

It's something they are very very good at. 

Often the simplest solution is the best but sometimes....

Simple = Scary

An expertly engineered log.
Lets hope there's no service ducts underneath it.
We avoid walking anywhere near this building but the locals seem oblivious to its potential imminent collpase.

Shoes

On a recent trip to Zurich I happened across a shoe shop. Nothing unusual in shoe shops, they have them in the UK too. There is however one staggering difference..... the price tag.



These tasteful winkle pickers could be yours for as little as £415




 

Or, you could part with £490 and be the owner of these horrors.







But the piece de resistance has to be these.
These will set you back a little shy of £1000 and can be accessorised with a matching belt from the skin of the same reptile. Nice.





SNOW !

Last weekend we had some more snow in Swissland.  On Saturday, it looked stunningly beautiful:

Shame, then, that on Saturdays we need to do the weekly shopping, as shops close too early in the evenings to shop properly after work, and shops are closed on Sundays.  We knew the forecast for Sunday was rain, but what can you do... Oh how I miss Britain where you can put off the shopping for the rainy day !

So having done the boring life-admin (shopping, laundry, cleaning the flat, ironing, etc...) on Saturday, we ignored the rain on Sunday and went for a hill-adventure in Andermatt.  This is what it looked like:

There seems to be a bear theme in Andermatt, they're on walls, roofs, bridges in the street and one on a GPz...Maybe he's a dispatch rider.




This snow's rubbish....its brown

 

Andermatt (1920m) is in for a shock as it is being developed by an Egyptian company. Building work has already started in the town centre and by the railway station. More info on the development can be found...HERE

The descent off the Overalppass looks fun.

Looking West towards Realp

A break in the clouds

 

No footprints of other people, just those of Yak. Yes really.

Yak?

Snow on Bench.
The metal and timber post behind the bench is an enormous crucifix, which doubles as a handy lightning conductor. Not a bench to sit on in a thunderstorm then...

I like snow :-)

  

Last time we were here there was a meter of snow and we tried something called skiing.
A novel pastime envolving a dangerous cocktail of speed, gravity, beer and the inability to stop.

Wolf tracks? Maybe. What ever it was had a huge gait on it.
Apparently there are over 200 wolves in Switzerland and now a number of bears.

Back below the tree line some good stump art (right)

Perfect timing to get off the hills as the weather closed in pretty quickly.

Fried apple, a coffee and a train ride home.

Cologne

Ok, so Cologne was great fun, but the weather was dull and grey, so we concentrated on spending time in our favourite outdoor shop (Globetrotter) and, of course, at the wedding.
Hence not really any interesting pics to share.

However, we did manage to go into the DOM (Cathedral), and were quite surprised by the very modern stained glass window:



No, not my camera playing up, it really DOES look like a test picture on TV !

 I also thought this - what is it ?  An angel? A gargoyle ? ... well, this THING was rather bizarre:

So back outside, in the REAL world:

Cologne here we come !

Off to Cologne for a wedding this weekend, so hopefully some nice pictures to share soon !  :-)

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.