June 21 - Grim weather today so suit up and head out to the shore of Lago di Lugano. This thin lake follows a series of valleys and has several ‘arms’, some of which cross the Italian border. It is glacial and, at one point, is crossed by a thin strip of land that is the remains of a terminal moraine.
Visit the Natural Science Museum, hoping to bide out time in a useful way until the rain stops. It is a good museum, full of well labeled and presented exhibits. Much emphasis here on the wealth of fossils that have been found at the World Heritage site to the south called Monte San Giorgio.
The formations hosting the fossils are Triassic, and occurred during a time when Switzerland was the enclosed lagoon portion of a shallow sea.
Get kicked out of the museum as it is supposed to close for lunch. Wander through Giusti Garden along the lake.
Take a chance and head east by bus to see the eastern district of the city along the lake.
Get down to the lake edge, where a path can be taken for some distance along the edge. More desperate to get out of the rain than anything else, we enter the Villa Heleneum, a historic building converted into an art gallery.
Follow the lake for a ways, then trudge up the hill for a bus back downtown. Eat at a place owned by a Venezuelan who has lived here for 25 years. Then through the curated narrow streets of downtown, lined with expensive galleries and clogged with tourists braving the rain like us.
One impressive thing we see on the bus journey back to the apartment. A wall of water coming toward the bus, arriving just before our stop. I rarely see a cascade like that unless I am in the equatorial regions. It ends just as quickly, like a curtain being dragged over the city.
Though we would hardly know it because of the cool rainy weather, Lugano has an almost tropical-hot feel. In moments when the sun comes out, the difference between humidity here and further north is clear.