We’re on our way to Switzerland today. An early cab ride into Domodossola to catch our train! We did enough walking on that road! A delightful train ride, very scenic as we rode through the mountains and along the valley of the Rhone river.

Mountains flanking the valley of the Rhone river in Switzerland.

The Rhone river forms Lake Geneva, flowing into the east end of the lake and flowing out at the west tip of the lake in the city of Geneva.

Swiss vineyards along the valley of the Rhone!

Lac Leman, or Lake Geneva.

We stopped short of arriving in Geneva. We want to arrive tomorrow morning to have a full day beginning our time visiting one of our favorite cities!

The view from our small balcony at the back of our B&B apartment.

The little stone dog (or wolf?) is guarding the rooftop!

I didn’t get any pictures of our B&B, but it was a great 2 room apartment, bedroom up front with a sitting/dining/kitchen room in back with the balcony, in an older building with a bar/lottery hall on the first floor.

We explored the quarry museum that we passed on the way to our B&B. The museum is closed but the grounds are maintained.

The quarry rises up behind the museum site. It looks like it is still operating, but there was no activity on the cliff face we could see.

Two smaller out-buildings at the museum.

We think these buildings model the use of the stone that is quarried behind them.

The short building shows the construction of the roof that allows the use of the rock slabs as roofing shingles. It has to be stout to carry that weight!

The clouds parted to show us some snow on higher peaks!

We had over 6 hours of train rides today to get to our destination so we had an early alarm to get packed and find a bite for breakfast before we caught our first train at 9:30. We are heading into the mountains and towards Switzerland!

The green tree-clad jagged mountains were topped with clouds.

We disembarked at Domodossola, a town we have traveled through at least 3 times before, even transferred to other trains here, but never stayed overnight in. We have 2 nights here at a bed and breakfast outside of town.

I’ve always liked the name, Domodossola, it just rolls off the tongue!

We decided to walk to our B&B, about 2 miles out of town, we needed the exercise after sitting on the trains for so long.

As we left the town edge we we passed green fields…

…and crossed the swollen Toce river. There has been so much rain in the southern slopes of the Alps that there was serious flooding in the southern cantons of Switzerland and the northern alpine regions of Italy!

We also passed a quarry carved into a rock cliff, a quarry museum and these carved decorations at the entrance to a villa along the road.

We arrived at our B&B and dropped our packs. It was cool out, not too sunny and we needed some supplies since there was very little in the way of shopping or restaurants out in the country! We decided to walk back into town to the grocery store, and back to the B&B, 6 miles total! It felt great! We had a great home-cooked dinner, a big salad and a good night’s sleep!

Another adventure exploring Genoa! Both Claire and I discovered that there are several funiculars (cable railways) and elevators around town to move people up the hillsides that rise behind the port and city. We used our newfound knowledge of the public transit system to take a bus to the base of one railway that ascends from the city through the Castelletto neighborhood and up to the Righi neighborhood where a huge park encompasses several wooded hills topped with old castle defenses. The Zecca-Righi Funicular is a regular commuter route, but we were there in the early afternoon so there were plenty of seats available.

The car ascends in a man made canyon and through a long tunnel with a few stops half way up.

At the top there is a great view looking back down to the city and the busy Port of Genoa, with a few ferries and (out of sight in this picture) a huge cruise ship! Turning around you are greeted with a view of the hills behind Genoa to the north, with communities filling in the valleys.

A couple of tourists!

We enjoyed a couple of beers and chips at the Astronomy Club bar a short walk from the station, but no walking the park paths today, way too hot! We caught a funicular ride back down, then a bus to the next train ride, the Ferrovia Genova-Casella narrow gauge railway that starts at Genoa Piazza Manin. This train is also known as“Ferrovia delle tre valli”, Railway of the Three Valleys, and takes passengers on an hour-long 25 km ride through the hills and valleys from Genoa to the small town of Casella (a municipality that is part of the Metropolitan City of Genoa). We got there all fired up for a ride and found out it was shut down for maintenance! Today only? Who knows! You can go on a virtual ride in this YouTube video. So we journeyed on to our next proposed ride on the “Funicular Railway Principe-Granarolo” on the other side of town. We got there and tried to figure out the schedule and where to board the train. We saw several people walking up and down the stairway beside the track and after about 15 minutes of internet research, we learned that the train is shut down for at least 2 years for upgrades! It looks like a steep ride in this YouTube video from 7 years ago! So far one for three, time to quit and get back to air-conditioning and rest up for another great dinner!

After a late dinner at a nearby restaurant we said our goodbyes because we had an early train to catch in the morning!

As we were leaving the ‘hotel’ Claire and Ed were staying in, I translated a poster board in the lobby and learned that the building was the Salvago Pinelli Palace from the 16th to the 18th centuries! After WW2, during which it was severely damaged, it was rebuilt and repurposed for offices and apartments.

It still retains some of the grandeur of a palace in the lobby and the entrance. Unfortunately, we never used this entrance, with the “marble portal consisting of 2 telamons (A figure of a man used as a supporting pillar) depicting two ‘wild’ men (in Genoese “sarveghi”) which allude to the owners of the house, the Salvago family.”

We caught the 10:30 train this cloudy morning for the one hour ride to Santa Margherita Ligure, a small town along the Ligurian coast north of the Cinque Terre. We then boarded the public bus to the even smaller town of Portofino, a 15 minute ride along the impossibly narrow winding road hugging the coast around tiny bays, with a mega yacht and small cruise ship anchored further out among motorboats and sailboats. A quick walk around the really tiny port and beach of Portofino (population of only 400), seeing the high end shops and the crowds of tourists, was enough in the heat of the day. It is a picturesque spot if you can see beyond the crowds.

The restaurants and cafes lining the waterfront were packed!

The park like setting rising up the hill opposite the beach looked inviting, but we didn’t know if it is private property or a public park!

Ed had read that recently the whole town of Portofino had been rented for a day by a rich family for a pre-wedding celebration!

We caught the little bus back to S. Margherita where we walked some of its waterfront and found a restaurant for lunch. There is more room to roam here and we leisurely walked back to the train station.

Another monument to Cristoforo Colombo!

Ahhh, truly living ‘La Dolce Vita’, the Sweet Life!