In my previous post I was talking about my fashion week trip to Milan. I had arrived to Milan two days before the fashion week started in order to visit the area. I had a whole day just for travelling so I decided to go to Switzerland. Mostly because it’s always been on my “to visit list”, bus tickets were just 8€ one way and I set a goal to visit 5 new countries in 2016 (which I managed btw). I chose Lugano as my destination and took the Flixbus to get there. The journey there was awesome, the bus had wifi on board and I was listening to Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand on their radio app or whatever it was. Shortly after I arrived to Lugano I got a very strangely written message from Flixbus telling me I had been withdrawn from my drive due to operational delay. Firstly I was rather angry but then I decided not to spoil my trip so I took a walk along the river to the city centre. When I arrived to the banks of Lake Lugano this beautiful view surprised me. It was quite foggy and it looked like straight out of some magical fairy tale.

It was a love at first sight with me and Switzerland. It looked very much like a little bit cleaner and way more expensive version of northern Italy. I saw a man who was cleaning all the trash bins in Parco Civico. I took a short walk in Parco Civico and along the lake before I went to the city centre.

I really enjoyed walking the streets of that adorable town. It has its own atmosphere. The fact that it’s situated in the Alps and on the shores of a lake makes it for a perfect getaway. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time nor money to visit one of the two famous mountains there (San Salvatore and Monte Brè). Funiculars go to both mountain tops if anyone is interested to visit it. I can already imagine the spectacular view from the top…Back to my day, I was looking for the renowned chocolatier house called Läderach because when in Switzerland I wanted to try its famous chocolate. They had a great variety of chocolate, truffles and bonbons. I bought the most reasonably priced chocolate bars for my family as gifts and one little bonbon for myself. I had a lunch at Manora restaurant which was a very nice self-service type of restaurant. The prices were quite ok for Switzerland. You somehow expect that everything is more expensive there.

I still had a lot of time after the lunch so I took a stroll along the lake. The weather was very nice; it was sunny all day long. I sat on a bench and ate my chocolate bonbon. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the lake and the reflection of the mountains in it. I didn’t want to go back to Milan. Lugano was that beautiful. I had to take a train because my bus was indeed cancelled. I took a bus to the train station and had one of the best cultural experiences of that trip. It was in the late afternoon and everyone was going back home from school and work. The bus was super crowded and so lively; everyone was talking to each other as if the whole bus was one big group of friends 🙂 The view over the Alps from the train station was superb but the price for the ticket cooled me down. If I remember correctly it was 23€. Just for one way. That’s more than I had paid for some of my plane tickets, haha. At least the train journey had some amazing views over the countryside. I can’t wait to explore more of Switzerland’s beauty in the future.

The view from the train station.