Ascona : A Touch of Italy in Switzerland

by Our Editors

We knew we were in store for a great lunch. As it turned out, it was far more: an unforgettable meal, in a storybook setting, that would leave us travelers swooning.

by Kelsy Chauvin

As we continued our stroll, Caser told us that the Bad Boys Club (Tel: 41-76-5378466), just off the piazza on tiny Via Moscia, was not in fact a gay bar as one might suspect, but just a local hangout with live music.

Ascona is a bit of a Mecca of jazz music in central Europe. It’s home to the ten-day Ascona Jazz Festival (www.jazzascona.ch) every June/July, hosting major performers from around the world. The festival focuses specifically on New Orleans culture, even inviting Big Easy chefs to participate in special culinary events.

The rest of the year, locals turn to local venues for their music fixes, like the Jazz Cat Club (Via Muraccio 21, Tel: 41-78-7336612. www.jazzcatclub.ch), part of Il Teatro del Gatto (www.ilgatto.ch).

Getting to know Ascona, and its neighboring town of Locarno (www.asconalocarno.com), things were getting more interesting by the minute. I discovered that Patricia Highsmith, author of The Price of Salt (upon which the film Carol is based) lived for years in Locarno, where she died in 1995.

Caser also told me about the peculiar Monte Verità (Hill of Truth), a socialistic artists colony that made a home for itself in the hills of Ascona in the early 20th century. They lived off the land, adhering to vegetarianism and nudism, welcoming people of all stripes and orientations to dwell in their peaceful sanitarium—among them, luminaries from Isadora Duncan and Hermann Hesse to Paul Klee and Carl Jung.

switzerland chauvin

That quirky past undoubtedly contributes to the je ne sais quoi charm of Ascona. On the surface, the place seems like an impossibly romantic city where you and your lover can get lost among the winding lanes and cobblestones streets, a saxophonist sexily filling the air with jazz. Deeper than that, though, there is an invitation to succumb to this realm of beauty, art, and nature.

It would’ve been easy to kick back in Ascona each day of my visit, or to pop over to the lakeside Giardino Lago (Via alla Riva 83, Tel: 41-91786-9595. www.giardino-lago.ch), my hotel’s sister property, a boutique hotel one town over, to sip wine on the deck all day.

But Caser invited our little group on an irresistible excursion through the Maggia Valley on the Giardino’s bikes. We rolled down picturesque pathways with stops at the “Wild Beach” and on a suspension bridge overlooking the Maggia River, where nude sunbathing is common, including a couple out-of-the-way spots known for gay cruising.

We parked our bikes for a break at Grotto America (Via ai grotti 71, Tel: 41-91-7962370. www.grottoamerica.ch). Across Ticino, grottos are common as roadside restaurants and bars, usually serving salami, wine, and other house-made delicacies. This particular grotto opened after World War II expressly to welcome American expats, and, it serves a similar purpose for today’s hungry travelers.

Giardino Ascona Pool

Giardino Ascona Pool

After a sampling of white merlot and luscious, local Le Maréchal cheese, we biked for a spell and finally locked them roadside, where we were fetched by the Giardino van. (New Yorker that I am, I asked Caser if the bikes would be safe with such teeny locks. His reply: “It’s Switzerland.”)

Caser was taking us deeper into the hills, past verdant mountains made even more beautiful with small churches and long flowing waterfalls. We demanded a few stops to be tacky tourists taking pictures, requests he was more than happy to indulge.

Finally we stopped at the village of Foroglio in the Bavona Valley, home to the nearly 400-foot-tall Foroglio Waterfall. Across a bridge and up a small hill, we were suddenly in a village right out of The Hobbit. This region is famous for its granite, which is a staple of its economy and architecture. And here was an alpine hamlet dotted with the sturdiest little stone homes you could ever imagine.

After I recovered from shutterbug overkill, I followed Caser’s sweet laugh and joined the others at the town’s real landmark: Restaurant La Froda (Val Bavona, Tel: 41-91-754-1181. www.lafroda.ch). Opened in 1928, it’s a restaurant that embodies everything a traveler hopes to encounter; La Froda has the pure character, timelessness, and simple, refined dishes that transport unwitting diners to a new gastronomic dimension.

Thankfully, our guide ordered a gamut of food for us; convenient, since our server (the co-owner) barely spoke English and there were no menus. Wildly delicious dishes began appearing on our little fireside table: buckwheat pasta pizzoccheri (short tagliatelle) with leafy greens and ricotta; goat stew cooked in nothing but red wine; homemade sausages; and unimaginably creamy, succulent polenta.

“You don’t do slow polenta,” said Caser, who finally was showing a level of excitement on par with ours. “This local place is good, good, good!”

Over the final bites of our torta di pane, a traditional Ticino dessert cake made with old bread sweetened with bits of fruit, chocolate, and sugar, I got wistful thinking that this might be my only visit ever to La Froda or to beautiful Ascona.

Then I remembered the lesbian couple from Luxembourg that Caser told me about. They’re now in their 60s and have stayed with him at the Giardino Ascona regularly for many years.

Perhaps I’ll have to follow their lead.

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