Almost Heaven
My tiny gondola swings precariously in the northern Italian breeze. A one-minute story
The funivia runs from Laveno on Lake Maggiore, up the mountain to the village of Monte Sasso del Ferro.
It is a system of jouncing, open, green metal buckets hanging from cables. Gondolas, they call them, but each one is only slightly larger than your regulation-size galvanized trash bin – without the lid. They can just barely accommodate two people.
I jump in, close the little half-door and stand, grasping the rim, white-knuckled. The gondola dangles and swings in the breeze high up among the trees as we gently climb almost to the top of the mountain. Not for the faint of heart, it is ten minutes of magnificent scenery and the solemn silence of nature.
Drinking a cup of cocoa in a little cafe in the upper village, my heart-rate returning to normal, I have before me an enchanting panorama of the Po Valley, the Lombard lakes, the Pre-Alps and the Alps.
Almost heaven if you ask me.
OMG !!! I thought water was deadly and roof tops, but THIS !!! AAAAACKKKK ))
WHy why why are you still alive? All this traveling in other countries, hotel rooms the size of a single bed with standing room, VEry odd foods, now this two man slingshot up a mountain. Yikes woman. These are exactly why I am a flatlander in the middle of the corn. Flat. Ahhhhh.. ))))
That's beautiful. Looks really neat. Would give me the willies but I'd get over it. Squaw Valley at Lake Tahoe has a good gondola/ski lift. In June one year, I took a couple visiting from Brazil up there for the ride. It had been a big snow year. First time that they had ever seen snow.