Europe Trip Part 3: San Salvatore

Lugano was our first stop, and after meeting up the family, sight-seeing was the first order of business.

Whenever there are mountains (or any other high point) in the place that you are visiting, it is always good to venture to the top for an aerial view. So that is what we did, took the funicular to the top of the mountain - Mt San Salvatore.
Mom stayed below because of her fear of heights, and I didn't look down the whole way up for the same (though less intense) fear.
It was incredibly steep! And you have to switch funicular cars halfway up - and the stairs you step out onto are also very steep - and you can look straight back down where you came from - yikes!

This is us in the funicular before we started our ascent.

At the top there were some sweet views! Unfortunately, Mon Amour and I forgot that our camera has a panoramic function....so no panoramics of this sweet view. Oh well.

Once you got to the top of the mountain, you could climb to the top of the church that was on top of the mountain. From there, the sweet views became sweet 360 degree views!

The drop off from the ancient narrow stair case that led to the church's roof, was a bit intense. I am glad someone took a picture, because I wasn't looking at the view at that point...at I was staring at the nice, firm looking step and not thinking about the height.

Other than the view - there were also these cool posters of antique post cards of the surrounding area. Little Sister has been to most of these surrounding areas (I think) so she wanted her picture taken next to just about all of them. Mon Amour took just one - but Little Brother had his own camera and was happy to oblige.

On the way back to the funicular, we tried to turn the winding staircase into a fun photo op.

We sort of succeeded.

This is San Salvatore from lake side level.

Some fun facts for you - the lake is about as deep as the mountain is tall (~3000 feet). I had a hard time processing this fact, since the bay that is near where I live maxes out at about 175 feet. Little Brother explained it this way - imagine the steepness of the mountain you can see, continuing straight down until it hits the equally steep mountain that is on the other side of the lake.