Locarno Part 3

And now for some relaxing!

After we climbed down from our hike (we only got lost once and had to backtrack a little bit to find the turn we missed), we stopped at a nice little cafe before taking the tram/funicular all the way back down to the bottom. Jeff, I took these pictures for you. While we were pretty high up on our hike, there were still cafes all over the place. And every one of them had a great view and plenty of beer. You could take any lift up to the top (there were even some ski lifts) and find yourself a cafe at the top or even a half mile walk away from where the lift ended. I'm not sure how they get all of their supplies up there. But you could go up there and not do any hiking at all and just sit and take in the amazing view with a refreshing beverage of your choice. They also had lots of different cakes and pastries there.

This was where we had our end-of-hike beer:



This was a random cafe about a half mile into our hike. We just turned a corner, and, voila, refreshment! There is another big cross here. Lots of big crosses in the mountains.



And, on the way down, some sort of fortress or old church that looked pretty:



Then we had some beers on our balcony.



Then we wandered into town for some (cheap) pizza for dinner. In town, on the piazza grande, there was a concert getting started. This was the first act. Some guy singing in Italian, not sure who. He wasn't that great. The next group that came on was pretty good but I didn't take a picture of them. Little did we know the concert would go until 3am. Europeans like to stay up until the sun rises on weekends. It was extremely noisy at night in Locarno.



And here's a Heineken booth! Not sure why, but Locarno was really big on Heineken. A G&T from this booth costs $12. Martin would not buy me one. :(



And there was also a big crowd watching the Munich-Milan football game on a big screen in a little park. I had to drag Martin away from it.



At night they light up the buildings on the piazza grande. Note that I took this picture around 9:30pm and it is still light out.



On Sunday morning on our way out of Locarno I had to take a palm tree picture:



And Jeff, this is where you could tie up your boat. Martin and I would visit you all the time if you had your boat on Lake Maggiore! There are lots of great beaches on the lake. We didn't go to any so I have no pictures of them, but I know they're there. Lake Maggiore looks so inviting when you're hiking 4,000 feet above it all I wanted to do was jump into it the whole time we were hiking.