Day 2: Bellinzona

Me looking out over the town from the castle.

We could see another castle from where we were... how amazing?

The day after we arrived we had free time to grocery shop and explore the capital of Lugano which is Bellinzona! I did a little research and Berne is the capital of Switzerland while Zurich is the largest city. Here everyone just calls Bellinzona the capital though so I am assuming Bellinzona is the capital of the "state" we are in which I THINK is Ticino and then Lugano is a town within all of that. However, I am no expert and everything looks beautiful everywhere you go so who cares!

We took the train in for 24 francs. It only took us 20 minutes to get there and we set off to explore the amazing castles. Below are gorgeous pictures from one of the three castles. We visited Castelgrande, but I still want to see Montebello and Sasso Corbarothey. During Carnivale they celebrate in the castles and streets. It is one of the largest, well known celebrations of Carnivale (except for Venice of course.)

My Italian teacher told us the Castles are fully renovated inside... so I have found my destination wedding location! After the we climbed up all the towers and tried to bust into a private party we decided to go grocery shopping. It was much easier to go here because in Lugano the walk back from the grocery store is up a MASSIVE hill. Call me dramatic but this is not Appalachian people. 

**I am going to do another blog post about the grocery stores in Switzerland and customs, prices, and products. However, I am going to hold off until I have more experience AND very exciting news we got today was that the Swiss-franc has dropped in value to below the U.S. dollar!!!@#$%^&*( Wooo this means I get more bang for my buck. If the franc does not drop I will not be gaining weight here because I am rationing all dinner meals and living off of rice cakes.

Sneak peak of my continued Day 2 blog post: What happens when 40 people try and go to dinner in a different country? & Coyote Ugly (yes, even the Swiss love Leann Rimes and bar dancing chains)

Group shot with the amazing background!