September 3

September 3rd (sunny and warm)
With sadness we left Levanto and ultimately Italy, and travelled towards Switzerland. Our memories of Italy are summed up as follows: happy, helpful, talkative and demonstrative people; warm weather and the beautiful, turquoise Mediterranean Sea; great ice cream (gelato); fragrances of cooking, especially pizza; long tunnels through the mountains; Piaggios; gold and orange buildings with green shutters and terraced gardens and homes on top of or on the sides of mountains. Simple Georg’s observations amount to: great beer and well-dressed, big-breasted women!
We decided to give Susi and break and drove the toll highways instead of the winding off-road alternates. She performed extremely well and we did not see a light all day (except the light at the end of each tunnel – ha hah!). We found the drive from Genoa to Milan quite drab. After Milan things started looking better. Once we crossed into Switzerland at 2 pm, the road was uphill all the way.
Just before Como, we were treated to a spectacular vista of a lake surrounded by deep, steep mountains which took us quite by surprise. Unfortunately, the highway systems over here do not afford stop-offs for picture taking. We hope that something similar would come our way in order for Georg to capture it on camera. The trip from Como to the Locarno campground was a wonderful ride through the Swiss countryside. Unfortunately, at an intersection just before Locarno, Georg confused it with “Lugano” and we found ourselves twenty minutes later heading back from whence we came. Eventually, we found our campsite. We are parked right up against Lago Maggiore, a lake which is about seventy kilometers long and has a spectacular view – quite a distinct change from the Mediterranean. We noticed that this campground is occupied predominantly by Germans. It is basically the southern-most part of a Germanic-speaking country which has palm trees and high mountains and skiing in the winter. Can’t get any better than that!
While I was preparing dinner, Georg took a long walk to obtain some Swiss francs and groceries. We had a wonderful dinner, found the site had internet access, did some updating and off to bed.