As many of you know, this whole experience has given the two of us opportunities that we never imagined in our wildest dreams. Everyone has been asking, so I'm finally going to start writing about the specific travel experiences, and I'll start with our first one. (you should know that I've been keeping a travel journal that's currently 65,000 words/105 MS word pages long and counting, with at least 10 trips left to add. Soooo if any of you know anything about the publishing world, we should talk)
Before we left the States, any overtime work or a big sale at work would be followed by "That's a trip to Switzerland!" Lugano, Switzerland is just across the border from Milan, a whopping 50 minutes away via train. This was our goal for the first place to whimsically go.
We arrived in Milan on a Thursday and walked around the city a tad. We walked around it a lot more on Friday. On the way home we stopped at the main railway station...and we bought tickets to Lugano for Saturday.
Being our first trip, we could barely sleep - there was a complete Christmas morning atmosphere to it. We were up early and the train left around 9:00 a.m. which meant that before 10:00 we were in a lakeside town in the mountains that was just waking up.
Within about 90 seconds of exiting the train, we were met with an expanse of rooftops, mountains, and a lake, with the sun bursting above the mountains, creating a haze that made it all look and feel a bit like a dream.
We scampered down through the town where shops weren't yet open, past the cafes where locals were having their cappuccini (in Italian, cappuccini is the plural of cappuccino, and goodness knows that I'm completely Italian now), through a couple of very pretty town-square areas with fountains, and down to the base of the lake - Lake Como.
We strolled through gardens, past beach-clubs, past the small palace, along the water to the base of a mountain. We stopped at a grocery store and got meat, bread, and cheese so we could have a picnic lunch along the shore. We ambled as high up the mountain as we could muster the energy for, but it wasn't terribly high. The views were nice, though.
It got better. We worked up a sweat with all the hiking and stomping around so upon our return to beach-level, we found some kids jumping out of a tree into the water. Naturally, we joined in. It was probably only 10 feet up or so, but it was outstanding. Maybe more impressive was that it was less than 15 feet from the shore, but the water gets so deep so fast that we were totally safe to dive in.
The remainder of the day was mostly just spent wandering around and indulging in the occasional sweet-food, followed by a big old pizza and pasta for dinner...on a patio just across the street from the lake. It was our first experience as a getaway, and I'd say it went pretty well.
Next trip: Brussels, September 13-15.
Before we left the States, any overtime work or a big sale at work would be followed by "That's a trip to Switzerland!" Lugano, Switzerland is just across the border from Milan, a whopping 50 minutes away via train. This was our goal for the first place to whimsically go.
We arrived in Milan on a Thursday and walked around the city a tad. We walked around it a lot more on Friday. On the way home we stopped at the main railway station...and we bought tickets to Lugano for Saturday.
Being our first trip, we could barely sleep - there was a complete Christmas morning atmosphere to it. We were up early and the train left around 9:00 a.m. which meant that before 10:00 we were in a lakeside town in the mountains that was just waking up.
Within about 90 seconds of exiting the train, we were met with an expanse of rooftops, mountains, and a lake, with the sun bursting above the mountains, creating a haze that made it all look and feel a bit like a dream.
We scampered down through the town where shops weren't yet open, past the cafes where locals were having their cappuccini (in Italian, cappuccini is the plural of cappuccino, and goodness knows that I'm completely Italian now), through a couple of very pretty town-square areas with fountains, and down to the base of the lake - Lake Como.
We strolled through gardens, past beach-clubs, past the small palace, along the water to the base of a mountain. We stopped at a grocery store and got meat, bread, and cheese so we could have a picnic lunch along the shore. We ambled as high up the mountain as we could muster the energy for, but it wasn't terribly high. The views were nice, though.
It got better. We worked up a sweat with all the hiking and stomping around so upon our return to beach-level, we found some kids jumping out of a tree into the water. Naturally, we joined in. It was probably only 10 feet up or so, but it was outstanding. Maybe more impressive was that it was less than 15 feet from the shore, but the water gets so deep so fast that we were totally safe to dive in.
The remainder of the day was mostly just spent wandering around and indulging in the occasional sweet-food, followed by a big old pizza and pasta for dinner...on a patio just across the street from the lake. It was our first experience as a getaway, and I'd say it went pretty well.
Next trip: Brussels, September 13-15.
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