Draws for the tournament in Lugano are here.

Yesterday, Sunday, we had a really early start, leaving the hotel at 4:30am (after returning to the hotel after 9pm). We avoided the Italian air strike set for yesterday afternoon though. We flew to Milan, Italy, then arranged a ride to Lugano, which is only about 70 minutes away by car. However, the ride showed up an hour late, and only spoke Italian, so it took about 30 minutes to find the car…the joys of traveling…and many fewer Italians seems to speak English…google translate to the rescue!

We arrived at the apartment I rented for the week, which was mostly pretty good, other than the sofa bed was…just a sofa, no pull out. The AC worked as well as AC does in Europe, and a good thing as it’s in the 90s here all week. We were very happy to see the washing machine and kitchen!

Everything other than restaurants is closed on a Sunday, but I had some snacks and Erin had pizza at the airport (made fresh on site). So we put our stuff in the apartment, got the washing machine going and went exploring. We are near the lake and town (full of expensive shops, Gucci, Rolex, Lacoste etc), restaurants and a grocery store (photos tomorrow). We walked along the lake to the Monte Bre funicular. A funicular is a train running on a narrow track up a mountain. We actually took two trains to get to the top where the view was fantastic, albeit a bit hazy. After having a cold drink, we walked around a bit and found the lookout point, then took the funicular back down. It was 25 CHF round trip (just over USD 25).

We walked back, looking for a place to eat. Food prices in Switzerland are definitely higher than in Spain, though we didn’t eat out much there.

It was a long but pretty fun day…finished off by cold showers (the hot water was out last night but fine this morning), but it had been so hot all day it was not the worst thing to happen.

I play today, Monday, not before 5:30pm. Erin plays not before 7pm tomorrow. We went by the club yesterday which was mostly deserted and the gentleman working at the bar/cafe spoke no English. Hopefully we can get a warm up this afternoon!