An "Afternoon Walk"

Well, room 6 students, it turns out to be good that I ran with you when we did laps outside. If not, I might still be stuck halfway down a Swiss Alpine mountain!

Yesterday my son, Ian, and his friend, Crystal, and I took a funicular to the top of a 925 meter mountain. It was a beautiful view, and everything started out great. A teacher at the college here had told us we should walk back down. He insisted it was a do-able walk, on well marked paths. He said it would take about 2 hours, and we would end up with a boat ride on Lake Lugano. Well, we packed a lunch of cheese, bread, water, and fruit, wore good shoes, and took off for a scenic afternoon.


We quickly found out that the "paths" were steep, sharply curving trails, with large rocks to climb over and much loose gravel on the ground.

We walked, and walked, and walked, and after 2 hours were no closer to the end of the trail, which was not well-marked. In desperate Italian, I found some construction workers and asked, "Dov'e Melide?" (Where is the town of Melide?) He said, "Lei va..." (you go...) and pointed the palm of his hand straight down. We met two different Swiss people who asked us where we were walking, and when we told them, they gave a common Italian sound of "Oooofff," which means, "Wow!" One lady said, in rough English, "You have good legs?"


Three and one-half hours later, we finally came out in a little town that is at least 5 miles away from Lugano. We had not only walked down, but a distance of five miles away. If you look waaayyy in the back of this photo, you'll see a tiny TV tower. That is where the walk started. This photo was taken when we reached the town!


But our walk still wasn't over. It turns out we weren't "right at the boat." It was probably another two hundred meters away, and it was getting ready to leave. At the end of our long walk, we had to sprint 200 meters to catch the boat! All I can say, though, is tht it was at least a beautiful, cool ride across the lake to home.




We treated ourselves to a spaghetti dinner in town, then started the 1 1/2 mile walk home for the night! So without all those laps at school, I might not have survived this "nice afternoon walk!!!"