Ticino, Switzerland

I visited Switzerland over the Easter Weekend - from Good Friday until Easter Monday. The first two days were spent in Lucerne, and the last two in the canton of Ticino. Here are some pictures from my fantastic trip.

When I left for Sweden back in January, I thought that it would be great if at some point during the year, I could visit my cousin John in Locarno. I haven't seen him in a while, and I had never been to Switzerland. So it would be the proverbial hitting two birds with one stone, as they say.

I thought that Easter weekend would be the best time to visit because it would be enough time for me to go around a new country without having to take any days off. And since John was a priest, it was a perfect opportunity for me to visit and celebrate Easter with him. So after John (or Don John as he is called in this Italian-speaking part of Switzerland) celebrated mass on Easter Sunday, he drove me around the canton of Ticino.

Here's the river that runs along Valle Verzasca. As you can see, the water is clear and pristine. I wanted to jump right in.

Of all the places I visited in Switzerland, this was my favorite. I really could have just sat here all day, soaking up all the nature I could get. It was beautiful!

There's a bridge that crosses the river and on my way there, I saw this guy (the little speck on top of the bridge) dive into the river. Must've been like a 50-foot plunge. Or more even. I tried to take a video of it, but I made a mistake while shooting it so wasn't able to catch his dive. It was actually pretty awesome.

Even more awesome was the person who bungee jumped off of this dam when John and I passed here. This was the same dam where they shot some sequences in the James Bond flick 'Goldeneye'.

Seriously, the drop was horrifically long. And the picture doesn't really do it justice. You have to be standing over the dam to get a feeling of how fearsome it is. Anyway, I managed to take a better picture of the bungee jumper after he completed his drop (check out the small spot in the middle of the picture)

We then head to Bellinzona, the capital of the canton of Ticino. There are three castles in Bellinzona. I don't know their names, but John took me to one of them.

On Easter Monday, John celebrated an 8am mass in a monastery in Locarno. This monastery houses cloistered nuns (Carmelites nuns, I think) which means they never leave the monastery. John told me that they can have visitors (who they can only talk to from behind a window I think) but during Lent, they can only talk to outsiders through some kind of blocked window. I don't know how they do it, but I was truly impressed at how strong their devotion was, for them to be able to live the way they do.

The Madonna del Sasso (Lady of the Rock), with Lake Locarno behind it.

John's house has a pretty amazing 'backyard'. A forest actually, and now that it's spring, the young, bright green leaves provide a vibrant and colorful view from John's large windows.

And one picture of both me and John. We were talking to John's sister, Napee, over skype and she asked us if we had any pictures together and we realized we didn't! So we took this picture of us before I left, and we even got Napee (via webcam) in the photo with us.

You can find more photos with spectacular views here. I couldn't put all my pictures in this blog post so I hope you check out the rest of my photos in my online album!