These were all taken by the Basillica of Santa Croce. Top photo is where you come out after touring the church and the museum. Middle photo is a statue of Dante. There is also a big cenotaph inside the church like there is for Michelangelo even though Dante is buried in Ravenna. It seems Dante was in exile from Florence at the time of his death and the city and Dante couldn't agree on the terms to have him return honorably. The bottom photo is the Christmas market set up on the Piazza di Santa Croce. This one added some color and warmth to the plaza. Just one more reason I love Florence.
After leaving Italy we headed for France with stops in Lugano and Lucerne Switzerland. The weather was a little less than perfect when we stopped in Lugano with it being cold with a light rain falling. We got a chance to walk around for a couple of hours and it looks like Lugano is a city for people with much deeper pockets than I've got. Lots of upscale shops - the kind of place where the "beautiful people" go to relax and get away.
Someone working there had this Moto Guzzi parked there. Actually, we were very close to the Guzzi factory as we left Italy and entered Switzerland.
Kevin and I came across this little thing while perusing the city. Looks kind of like something we would have encountered at the High Mileage Contest we used to enter. It's pretty tiny to be street legal but could be just the thing for the congested streets of the European cities.
Statue by Dali. There were several by him, actually, in a little plaza facing the lake. If I was going to have an art installation, I'm not sure I would have commissioned several by him. They are all rather large and I would assume, costly. However, if you look at the name on the awning behind the statue, you could infer that there was some money to be had in the city.
As we left Lugano we headed into the Alps and the rain turned to snow. The photo doesn't do it justice but it was quite pretty and the higher we got the prettier it got. However, a week later they got hit with three feet of snow that fell in a matter of 12 hours and ended up with this:
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| Photo From Here |
It's pretty but it had the roads shut down for a while. I wouldn't have minded being trapped for a couple of days in the Swiss Alps but that would have upset the rest of the schedule. We passed through the Gotthard Road Tunnel and when we came out the other side the weather was completely different - no more snow. The tunnel is 10.5 miles long and our tour guide mentioned prior to entering the tunnel that typically, the weather is always different on the two sides of the mountain. This time was no exception. Gray and snow on one side, dry and sunshine on the other. A little snow cover on the ground would have been nice but the chalets on the mountainside were still very pretty.
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