Having spent the previous two Easters either in Turkey/Iraq (2011) or Israel (2012), I was excited to experience an Easter in Switzerland. It's quite a big holiday here, with Good Friday and Easter Monday both being official holidays. I decided to spend the weekend with Stefanie in Ticino. We had planned to do the Glacier Express train ride, but the weather was going to be terrible, so we couldn't have seen anything from the train anyways. Thus, we decided to hang out in vacationland, aka Ticino, on of my favorite places on earth.
I took the train down on Friday, and Stefanie and I walked down by the lake in the afternoon, visiting a camellia garden and the Maggia River. In the evening, we drove into Italy to go to a popular (and inexpensive!) Chinese restaurant just over the border. I don't normally think of driving in to Italy for Chinese food, but it was quite nice.
On Saturday, it just rained cats and dogs. We had such a slow day that we ended up eating lunch only at 5 pm! We played board games and read and had a really relaxing day.
Easter Sunday dawned super bright and sunny, so we walked down by the lake in the morning, enjoying the almost 60 F weather! Spring here has been unusually cold and grey this year (they're saying that this is the coldest spring in Berlin since the 1880's), so it felt so nice to have the sun.
For the afternoon, we went across the lake to a botanical garden near Vira. We had a lazy afternoon wandering around the garden, smelling the flowers, and sitting by the lake, soaking up the sun.
In the evening, we went to Stefanie's parents' house and had Easter dinner with them. It was so nice to celebrate Easter with a family and to see what traditions other people have.
On Monday, I caught a rather early train back to Zürich so that I could get myself ready for the work week, and because it was more sunny on the other side of the Gotthard than in Ticino. I'm definitely a sun chaser these days! It was a really nice weekend, and I am happy to have friends to share it with and good weather to enjoy!
I took the train down on Friday, and Stefanie and I walked down by the lake in the afternoon, visiting a camellia garden and the Maggia River. In the evening, we drove into Italy to go to a popular (and inexpensive!) Chinese restaurant just over the border. I don't normally think of driving in to Italy for Chinese food, but it was quite nice.
On Saturday, it just rained cats and dogs. We had such a slow day that we ended up eating lunch only at 5 pm! We played board games and read and had a really relaxing day.
Easter Sunday dawned super bright and sunny, so we walked down by the lake in the morning, enjoying the almost 60 F weather! Spring here has been unusually cold and grey this year (they're saying that this is the coldest spring in Berlin since the 1880's), so it felt so nice to have the sun.
For the afternoon, we went across the lake to a botanical garden near Vira. We had a lazy afternoon wandering around the garden, smelling the flowers, and sitting by the lake, soaking up the sun.
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| Locarno is across the lake. |
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| These flowers smelled so good! |
In the evening, we went to Stefanie's parents' house and had Easter dinner with them. It was so nice to celebrate Easter with a family and to see what traditions other people have.
On Monday, I caught a rather early train back to Zürich so that I could get myself ready for the work week, and because it was more sunny on the other side of the Gotthard than in Ticino. I'm definitely a sun chaser these days! It was a really nice weekend, and I am happy to have friends to share it with and good weather to enjoy!
