A couple of weeks ago a friend and I
hiked up to Alpe Bolla from Monte Bre, partly to get out of Lugano for the afternoon and partly to check out the hut at Alpe Bolla. Hiking between huts is a new (to me) and massively improved (imho) take on backpacking. You hike all day! And then there is an actual bed to sleep in! And a delicious meal, complete with the local variety of alp cheese! No need to carry a tent, or survive on trail mix, or sleep in the rain. I can't wait to take advantage of this...
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| The hut! |
Thinking of good photo captions/titles is just not one of my strong points...
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| Dandelions |
I took a ton of pictures of the dandelions...my hiking buddy was a bit baffled by my new-found love for dandelion photography. She asked seriously, "You don't have dandelions in the US?"
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| Special and Beautiful Swiss Dandelion |
The specifics: Alpe Bolla is about 2 hours from Bre, hiking quickly. There are a number of routes down (or up, I suppose): backtrack to Bre, down to Pregassona or Cureggia, back to Bre via Monte Boglia, or on to Dente della Vecchia. We descended to Pregassona, which took closer to 2 hours than the projected hiking time of 3. There's a TPL bus from Lugano to Bre (beats the expensive scary funicolare, though it doesn't run as often) and another one back from Pregassona. Ditto Cureggia, but not on Sundays. The Pregassona bus runs much later than the Bre bus and funi, so my recommended route would be Bre to Alpe Bolla to Pregassona, with a potential side trip to Dente della Vecchia (that's going to be my next hike).
*When resuming blogging in a totally abandoned blog, it is best to just pick things back up without comment, tempting though it is to write several paragraphs apologizing for being a bad blogger. I just made up this blogging rule. It's a good blogging rule, don't you think?
