It's Italy but a little bit Swiss
Here we were again at Gare du Nord after arriving on Eurostar. 18 months ago, whilst en route to Vienna, it had seemed a straightforward transfer to Gare du Lyon for our onward train as we descended into the metro station to catch out green line (D) between the two mainline stations. But we discovered on the platform that no metros were running and we therefore hurriedly emerged from the bowels of Gare du Nord to find a long taxi queue. After an extended wait, we stated our destination. The driver said ‘oof!’ as only a Parisian taxi driver can do, before telling us there was a demo in the city centre and he didn’t know if he could get there on time, but he would do his best. A circuitous, fast and anxiety ridden journey then ensued, before we were hurried bundled out at Gare du Lyon and possible ripped off in our hurry to pay him and get on our way. We had managed to catch the train by the skin of our teeth.
So, when we arrived in Paris last week, although we had over three hours transfer time, we agreed that we would go straight to Gare du Lyon before getting some lunch to try and expunge the trauma of our previous Paris transit. The metro was running OK – our first objective accomplished. However, it was very crowded, and we fell into the packed train along with an African family who had 2 sets of 3 suitcases sellotaped together, a small boy with a bike (who had already fallen off it on the platform) and a girl strapped to her mother’s back in the traditional African style. It was holding your breath for the short journey with the not inconsiderable sized suitcases of our own. Our plan to use left luggage at Gare du Lyon wasn’t going to work as there was a queue that didn’t seem to be moving so we lugged our cases into town to find a nice bistro for lunch. That was the best bit of Paris, truly Parisian, with a surly waiter, steak haché and frites. But then getting on the train for Basel was like Euston, Paddington or worse, with the platform number being called only a few minutes before the departure time, resulting in a scrum of several hundred people jostling to get on board. When we finally sat down, Jane said she was no longer so keen on travelling by train for next year’s birthday trip to Switzerland and she would rather fly. She promptly went to sleep, and I started idly flicking through Facebook only to find an announcement that Eurostar have plans to run trains direct from London to Switzerland. It was hard to resist waking her up to tell her the news. Our 2-year-old grandson Arty, when he gets to a scary bit on a video, says, ‘skip it!’ When Jane woke up, we agreed that although we love Paris to visit for its own sake, we looked forward to the new Eurostar service when we could take Arty’s advice and ‘skip it’.
A hot but fast and smooth three hours took us to Basel where we checked into the ultra-modern Mövenpick Hotel near the station with its window blinds which automatically ascended and descended as the sun went in and out. The lift was weird too – we had to select our floor number before alighting and then felt out of control, trusting it to take us to the right place.
The next morning, we were off again. “But where are you trying to get to?” I hear you cry. “581 words in and we still don’t know your destination.” Well, let’s keep is a mystery, shall we? To encourage you to keep reading. A short hour’s train ride took us the Zurich before boarding another to Lugano. Zurich and Lugano are on opposite sides of the Alps, so the second ride promised to be spectacular. We chose to sit on the right-hand side to afford the best views of Lake Zurich, Lake Zug and Lake Lucerne. As we arrived at Brunnen on the shore of Lake Lucerne I recalled meeting my parents there about 50 years ago when they were on holiday in the Alps and I was spending my summer vacation from uni with Maharishi at his TM centre in Seelisberg. We could easily spot Seelisberg perched on the clifftop on the opposite side of the lake. We entered a long tunnel under the mountains, somewhere below Andermatt where I skied as a child, before emerging on the south side of the Alps and arriving at Lugano. The station café had outside seating with view across Lake Lugano, an ideal place to have lunch before boarding the last stage of our journey, a bus which was bound for St Moritz, back up in the Alps. We had the best seats right behind and above the driver so that Jane could look out and see the road in front, ideal for someone with a tendency to travel sickness. She told me that on a recent trip to Gran Canaria involving a lot of coach travel, these seats were dubbed the ‘vomit seats’ where she made friends with her regular vomit seat companion. I was happy to be her non-vom companion on this occasion if it afforded me such wonderful views as we entered Italy whilst skirting Lake Lugano. Next, we descended to Lake Como at Menaggio and spotted Varenna across the water where we would be staying next week. Along Lake Como and then up into the mountains. But we weren’t going all the way to St Moritz and asked the driver to let us off at Chiavenna where we had booked a hotel for five nights.
How did we come to be in Chiavenna which no-one has heard of? It was only last February that I read an article in The Guardian which gave us the idea. We were already thinking of staying on Lake Como and were delighted to find that Chiavenna was only just up the road, about 15 miles from the top of the lake. According to the article, George Eliot, wrote, “lovely Chiavenna … mountain peaks, huge boulders, with rippling miniature torrents and lovely young flowers … and grassy heights with rich Spanish chestnuts,” For Mary Shelley it was “paradise … glowing in rich and sunny vegetation”, while Goethe described it as “like a dream”. Annabel Abbs, who wrote the article for The Guardian said, “this could be the most quietly romantic town we had ever visited”. And I can tell you straight away that, even after such a build up, we were far from disappointed.
After eating at our own hotel, we mooched into town to have a look round and possibly locate a gelateria. Dusk was falling so it was doubly exciting when found ourselves, by chance, on the bridge overlooking the river that plunges turbulently over the rocks through a gorge that slices through the centre of town. It was the view we had seen in the Guardian article but even more dramatic and romantic in the failing light. Even if I had the sufficient vocabulary to do justice to this scene, it would fall short of actually showing you the photo which, in turn would fall short of actually being there.
A blow-by-blow account of the rest of our week would be so boring, wouldn’t it? So, I will just tell you about some of my personal highlights.
Chiavenna is famous for its “crotti” (caves) which were traditionally used to keep food cool during the summer months. Many of these are now restaurants and we visited one of these for dinner although it seemed to be just a building at the foot of a cliff. Perhaps the kitchen was in the cave bit. I tried a local speciality, pizzoccheri – buckwheat pasta, heavily smothered in rich cheese - with a hint of cabbage in a feeble attempt to offset its stodginess. It seemed like a posh version of the “cheesy pasta” that we made our kids when they were little. No, I didn’t really enjoy it, but I put it down to experience, along with the horsemeat I ate in Sardinia, the crocodile and impala in Botswana, buffalo in Canada and, many years ago as a teenager, whale in Iceland, all experiences never to be repeated. I was however very excited by the half bottle of chianti that we shared, and I have been searching ever since to buy some more of it.
So, we weren’t very convinced by these crotti, until we were walking along the river in the afternoon heat and suddenly felt as if we had stumbled into an air-conditioned room. We realized that we were standing close to a disused crotto which was pumping out cold air, presumably by funnelling the wind through a damp cave.
One of the many things that delighted us about Chiavenna was that hardly anyone spoke English to us as we have come to expect in tourist places all over the world. We had to make do with the little Italian we know, in my case, mostly derived from classical music where Italian is the lingua franca. For example, “senza sordino” means “without mute”. “Senza gas” is bubble-free water. We are more likely to send postcards from Italy than any other country as I love nothing more than to walk into a tabaccheria and ask for “francobolli” in my most flamboyant Italian. It’s so refreshing when they don’t answer you in English, even if we don’t know what they are saying!
One day we trudged up 300m of steep steps in the growing heat to the village of PIanazzola which, until the 1970s, was inaccessible by car. So, the village itself has no roads, and we explored the alleyways that run between the houses. It was very quiet with nothing but the odd lizard scuttling across a wall and a stray cat. We eventually came across some people sitting outside their house. They were very welcoming and we had a chat as much as our limited Italian would allow. Jane has also always been very skilful in communicated with gestures when words have failed her. I was dismayed that there was no bar up in the village, so it wasn’t until our descent to the town that we were able to collapse in a bar for a beer. And what a bar it was, one which Jane had previously spotted with a little balcony right above the gushing river that hurries through the gorge in the centre of town. For a very reasonable 16 Euros we shared a ‘piccolo tagliere’ (small wooden platter) which turned out to be a massive display of freshly cut meats and cheeses – nothing “piccolo” about it at all - that even the two of us couldn’t manage, so the remainder had to be wrapped up and taken home to our fridge for some future meal.
We took a short bus ride to the neighbouring village of Piuro where a landslide in 1618 destroyed the entire village and killed up to 2,500 inhabitants with only 6 survivors - one of the downsides of living just below the steep valley sides beneath the 2,000m high mountains. All that survived was the Palazzo Vertemate-Franchi which is now at the top of the new village. Together with a couple who had arrived from Milan on their sparkling Moto Guzzi (“he treats the bike better than he treats me”, the wife told us) we were shown round the magnificent super-ornate villa. With its four poster beds, elaborate artwork, kitchen garden and stunning view down the valley, Jane asked me why I hadn’t booked this place instead of our hotel in the town. “Have you seen how lumpy the beds are?” I replied.
Our hotel, with its lump-free beds, is named after the nearby San Lorenzo church, not particularly interesting in itself, but I love the belltower and tranquil cloisters with their cream-coloured arches. Fortunately walking through these cloisters was the quickest way to several of our destinations including the posh resto where we went for our 41st wedding anniversary meal. The food was delicious and we weren’t put off by our po-faced fellow diners who didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves as much as us. Sometimes a restaurant can be too quiet.
The breakfast in our hotel was nothing to write home about so, one morning, we bunked off and breakfasted at a café where we had already eaten, perhaps, the best bruschetta ever. At Sierra Nevada Especialty Coffee: Torrefazione Artigianale – Sierra Nevada Coffee Roasters they roast their own coffee, helped perhaps by the fact that one of the owners is Colombian. We absolutely loved this place and even more so when Jane bought some coffee beans (La Nonna – the grandmother) which they ground for her on the spot.
It has been hot all week, well into the 30s, so each afternoon we have retreated to our air-conditioned room for siesta and blog writing, before going out again in the late afternoon, sometimes to the shops which have a long lunch break and then stay open until 7pm. So, it feels like we’ve had two days for the price of one. On our last evening, I popped into the supermarcado for a bottle of water and saw someone in the checkout queue with this tote-bag which really sums up our week:
This featured blog entry was written by Robin Logie from the blog Becci would have loved it here.
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