Touching on Bellinzona

First of all, let me say "Mi dispiace" 

I know I haven't been on in a long while, but it's because this has been two REALLY busy weeks (well, one week and two weekends!)

As you know, We were traveling to

Monte Tamaro to see Mario Botta's Santa Maria degli Angeli Chapel, which--for any of you archi-buffs, is a pretty cool place. And we saw it. In person.

This post is a little heavy on the pictures I know, but bear with me, and we'll get through it together. The next post is on my model/bike ramp projects (exciting...? eh.) So soak it up, it may be a while before I get to the post from Campodolcino that you all are looking forward to.

We took the funiculare up to the Chapel, and I would have liked to hike, but we had no time--we had a lunch date in Bellinzona at 12.

Below right is the view of the Chapel as we approached it. You can see the gears of the funicular in the top of the picture.  

It was an awesome ride up the mountain, and I was definitely freaking out over some sweet alpine views. 

The chapel was absolutely gorgeous, and the views were awesome. Botta is not my favorite architect by any standard, even if he's the trademark architect of the Ticino, but this was really nicely done, and my pictures do not do it justice.

Will even took a nap at the chapel!(It was too beautiful to resist a little mid-morning snooze.)

 In fact, according to will it was just too Bottastic. Which is our new phrase for anything Botta-like in the Ticino. We get to use our lame architectural humor a lot over here, with all 16 of us studying here.

So we began the trip to Bellanzona, on our Mercedes tour bus. (which apparently is pretty common around here.)

We got to Bellinzona in time to wander through the market on the way to the Castelgrande, where we were having lunch. (Hell yes, we had lunch in a CASTLE!!)

Will almost got this sweet backpack, and I picked up a little something for Bleighton that I found at a craftsman's booth. The Market is fun, even though everyone pretty much spoke English, so I didn't have to try out too many of my new Italian skills. Which is probably a good thing, considering my skills are a little questionable...

The Castelgrande was pretty awesome, the interior and entrance was done by Galfetti, who is something of a local favorite, and is also (in my opinion) a thousand times better than Botta, just way more under-recognized.

After lunch, which was spectacular and included Polenta-- a local dish which tastes like a better version of grits and is made of corn, we hiked up to the other two castles in Bellinzona (there are three)

 The first one one the right is Castelgrande but is actually taken from the second castle. The hike was fast, because we basically power walked it. We only had a couple minutes to get up to all three castles (as in 30 minutes for a two-hour hike). I can't tell you how much my glutes and calves hurt the next day, I can only tell you that we did the hike in about 1 hour. It was intense... intensely fun!

(lame, I know-- again, you all most likely know me, and in turn my sense of humor, so no apologies here)

The second castle, Montebello is pictured below, and this picture was taken from Sasso Corbaro which is really more of a walled keep, but is also ridiculously cool. I don't have any good pictures of Sasso Corbaro, so I just opted to leave it off. So here are a couple views from each, and you can tell they're pretty far away (a hefty hike).

I'll leave you with a picture of Alice and I at the top of Sasso Corbaro on the ramparts!