We woke up to a cold (21°C) and rainy morning. Well… I say we woke up to rain, what I really mean is that it rained not long before we got up and by morning, I mean it was technically before noon but you would use minutes and not hours to calculate the time between when we woke up and noon.
The water on the ground, low clouds and promise of rain in the forecast didn’t stop us from heading out and getting our pizza margherita for breakfast (opting for indoor seating this time). Our first instinct was to cancel the day. Hiking in the rain is not for us and since we were planning on doing Mount San Salvatore which has a steeper incline to the summit, we didn’t want to risk it. But, the forecast told us that the later it got, the nicer it tended to be. After much deliberating and getting to the very clear conclusion that other than being outside there’s nothing to do for us in Lugano. Well… there is the financial abyss of the local modern art museum with its metaverse exhibition and the local natural history museum with its 1500 dehydrated mushrooms exhibition, but if you, dear reader, are enthusiastic about visiting either, you’re better people than we are.
Carabbia - Monte San Salvatore, Ticino, Switzerland - 43 Reviews, Map | AllTrails
Explore this 4.0-mile loop trail near Carabbia, Ticino. Generally considered a challenging route, it takes an average of 2 h 40 min to complete. This is a popular trail for hiking and running, but you can still enjoy some solitude during quieter times of day. The best times to visit this trail are April through October.
www.alltrails.com
We rolled the dice and decided to try our luck hiking. We choose a way up San Salvatore that would allow us to pay the exorbitant 25 CHF for a ride down if the weather turned. We also planned a loop on the west side of the mountain with a couple of options to bail if the weather turned. All of that planning was for naught. The weather improved hourly going from a heavy gray sky to a blue sunny sky.
The trail itself was very well marked, clean and well maintained. The perfect setup. It was very comparable to yesterday’s hike but with views on different portion of the lake. We even have a mirror image picture of the lake. Elevation gain was about the same but total distance being a smidge under 12km, made it 5km shorter than yesterday. The trailhead being less than a kilometre away helped.
A good shower (hiking in humid condition will make nature stick to you like glue) and some relaxing time at home got us to dinnertime in the blink of an eye. We headed to 📍Osteria Trani (the train restaurant). Recommended by the Routard and well rated on Google Maps, we thought it to be a safe bet. As with our weather dice from earlier today it payed off. Not as much as rain turning into clear blue skies, maybe like betting on red at the roulette and having it turn out red. The meal was good but the discovery was the white Merlot that took us by surprise as a fragrant yet refreshing white wine.
Places
Osteria Trani · Via Cattedrale 12, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland
★★★★☆ · Restaurant
maps.app.goo.gl
