......and on to Wednesday

Wednesday is market day in Luino, a small town just a few miles into Italy. Even though it was rainy we decided to head down and check it out. Apparently, since it was rainy, just about everyone else around the lake seemed to have the same idea. It was a good thing that we got there early while there was still parking left. We walked around for an hour or so and Pauline bought herself a nice, Italian made wallet. Most of the people that we have talked to speak little or no English. However if you show an interest they are all willing to try to converse with you. The lady that Pauline got the wallet from was just such a person. She worked hard at the sale, choosing colors for Pauline, telling her that she was 'practico' when she realized that Pauline only wanted black or brown. The fun came when it was time to pay for it. We are pretty good at costs in Switzerland with the franc as 1 franc is fairly close to 1 dollar. This time we were in Italy and we had no idea what the rate was with the euro. I actually went into a bank and after 5 minutes or so was able to get them to understand that I only wanted to know how many Swiss francs were in 1 euro.  The wallet Pauline wanted to purchase was 28 euros, we had just been to a cash machine and taken out 20 euros. It got to be fun trying to figure out how many francs we needed to add to the 20 euros. We did it and Pauline got her new wallet. We headed back to Switzerland, lunch at a restaurant alone the lake and back to the house.

Pauline headed out into the vineyard that surrounds the house checking out all the wildflowers that grow among the grape vines. She returned with a shirt full of cherries she picked and made a wonderful cherry tart for dinner.

Later that day Pauline and I headed down to the center of Locarno to check out the train schedules and to find an internet cafe. There was a cafe right at the train station where we enjoyed a wonderful cappuccino and worked a bit on this blog. The evening was rather quiet, I think the time change was catching up to all of us, and everyone was in bed before dark, (which is 10 pm here).