June
2008
Buses in the Rain, Day 190
Today we at breakfast at 7am, as usual, and caught the 7:29am bus to Chur, as usual, but we did not go into Chur nor depart by train! Instead, we caught the 8:10am bus to Lugano. …We had reservations on the local, but Katherine and I noticed that the departures board listed two buses to Lugano, so we went to the reservation desk and had our group moved to the express bus. Knowing that we’d shortened our travel time helped make up for the cold drizzle usurping the summer sunshine.
Once on board, I sat with Sarah, and we both felt like the trip was going to be different even before we left the outskirts of Chur. Perhaps it’s because the bus winds through little roads and neighborhoods instead of barreling along like the train. Perhaps it’s because the slower speed is more restful and relaxing. Soon enough though we were cruising down the highway, almost as fast as the trains. It felt like we were actually riding through a forest because the trees were so close to the road. Even with the rain, the scenery is breath-taking. There are hills so liberally covered in wildflowers – swaths of yellow, white, red, purple and places where the colors are all mixed in a solid blanket over the ground. The effect from a rain-blurred moving bus window is of driving through a Monet painting executed on a mountainside canvas.
Lugano is much closer to Italy than Chur and German-influenced Zürich. The Grand Hotel Eden in Lugano is proudly and luxuriously Italian – managing not only to pull off a lobby of dark wood and zebra-print lamps with leopard-print furniture, but to make it look good. As befits a five-start hotel on the water, the Eden has its own dock, and the hotel restaurant is used to guests showing up by private boat and proceeding directly to reserved tables. (The restaurant has giant picture windows with stunning views of the water.)
The hotel itself is actually two towers connected by underground passage. When the hotel first opened the passage contained small shops, but those have given way to decorative displays. The walls in the hotel’s hallways are not adorned with mere paper, but with softly patterned brocade. The rooms are spacious, and the suites are immense – I’ve seen smaller apartments at home. Another striking difference is the hotel’s smoking policy: several of their rooms are not non-smoking, and this is not likely to change until required by law because so very many of the hotel’s guests expect to be able to smoke in their rooms.
The rain, which was pouring when we took the ten-minute walk from the local bus to the hotel, was still pouring when we took the ten-minute walk back to the local bus. My feet stayed dry, which is a serious credit to the Gore-Tex shoes, and my raincoat offered some protection for the rest of me. Our planned picnic lunch by the water was nixed in favor of an earlier bus back towards Chur. We stopped in Bellinzona for a lay-over and a connecting bus.
Bellinzona was under more of a light rain than a deluge, so Andi and I walked around a bit before stopping in a cafe for hot chocolate and tea with Dr. Garely and Professor Blake-Neis. The chocolate came in the form of a glass of very hot milk (perfect for a cold, wet day), and a packet of cocoa mix. …Switzerland has chocolate factories and chocolate shops, but it seems like the majority of the country just isn’t as devoted to chocolate as I had been led to believe. The velvet-textured hot cocoa I’ve tasted in Prague, and the pot of melted chocolate mixed with milk I’ve been served in Bruges, don’t have much competition from this trip.
