One of the many beautiful
Swiss cities. With it's 26'000 inhabitants (and 128'000 in the surrounding territories around it (figures are from
1998)) it is one of the three most populated cities in the
Ticino canton.
The city has direct train connections to
Milano,
Venezia and
Zürich - and this makes it a frequent stop for
backpackers that find themselves situated 100 metres above a cute little
lake (260
m above sea level) with a lot of
magnificent steep hills (up to 1000 metres). It also makes it one of the many favourite places for rich old
German and Swiss German tourists that stroll around in the steep streets occasionally buying some
ice cream and doing some shopping.
In general, the place reminds one of a lot of other sites in the Northern Italian areas of
Europe (- except that this is indeed
Switzerland - less than 10 kms of
distance, but a huge mental one from Italy).
Due to the wealth of the tourists coming to
Lugano,
fashion shops are all over the place, and muh effort has been put into translating everything into
German.
If you stop by, don't
miss out on a small boat trip round the lake. Extremely
cosy and a
nice escape from the general heat level of the valley (>30 degrees
Celsius).