The day started off well, with barely a cloud in the sky, though it was quite hazy. We walked down from our hostel near the train station to the centre of town by the lakefront, which looks very different than Geneva, because of its different topology, with mountains literally rising out of the water.
Our first tourist destination of the day was Swissminiatur, which we got to by the first of many ferries of the weekend.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I like models, so I was looking forward to a whole park full of them. And it didn't disappoint with over 100 models of Swiss landmarks, kilometres of working train tracks, moving toy cars on a motorway, mini paddlesteamers going around a minilake and working minicable cars going up to mini snow covered mountains.
The only issue was well, the sameness of all the models. There aren't really any major standout Swiss architectural landmarks, and all the cathedrals, castles, houses, chalets, town centres, farms, while they do have their regional differences are all fairly similar. There were lots of castles in which looked like the one below, though not all of them had ducks sleeping them. *smiles*
The most impressive model, which was big enough for people to walk through, even though it was to the same scale as all the others was of a building that wasn't even in Switzerland - the Duomo di Milano, which I unfortunately forgot to take a photo of the exterior. I'll just have to go see the real thing someday. *winks*
On the way back to Lugano on the ferry, we stopped by the exclave of Campione d'Italia which has some special tax status, and takes advantage of this through a large casino right on the shore, with this fountain in the lake.
After arriving back in Lugano, we strolled around the small town centre and part of the lakefront, in which I didn't really notice anything particularly spectacular, though it was quite pretty. We went into a free art exhibit at the cultural museum, which started kind of disturbingly with photos of deer with colored snakes wrapped around them, and ended freakyly in a small room in which was a swarm of dead flies on fishing wires.
We went to the tourist office to ask for information about the hikes around the area, as we had planned to do one the next day, and the girl there convinced us to do one that evening, the so called 'Olive Tree Trail' between two towns on the lake, Gandria and Castagnola, along which there were signs about the history, production and use of olive oil. So we got on our third ferry of the day and headed out to Gandria, which is a small fishing village built into a hill and followed the markers and signs back.
We caught the bus back to Lugano in time to catch the end of the a Swiss Classic Racing time trail in the centre of town, where vintage cars were tested on a very short track for consistency.
