<We spent the last two days discovering two of the climbing areas close to Locarno. Yesterday we headed out to Ponte Brolla, about 6km away from our apartment. Our Tom Tom had a little trouble finding the area so we spent the better part of an hour driving through the backcountry. The Defender handled well, but we did find that we had to reverse a few times to make it around steep corners.
When we finally found Ponte Brolla we had a great time experiencing the slab climbing at the area. The routes where all well protected, but there where lots of people. A few swissis next to us really scared us… they where lead climbing on a gri gri and handled the thing all wrong. Anyways we are starting to fall in love with this region.
Saturday evening, after a long shower back at our rental apartment, we headed back to Ponte Brolla hoping to find some authentic local food. We where very disappointed with what we found. After looking around all the places in Ponte Brolla we finally ended up in Pizzaria Mamma Mia. The service has been among the worst we have ever received anywhere. We generally felt unwelcome there. The food was ok, but we will definitely never return. Normally we wouldn’t write about restaurants we couldn’t say anything nice about, but this place was horrible – bad service, average food, high prices. Definitely not worth going to.
Today we tried another climbing area as Ponte Brolla was still wet from the rain last night. Torbeccio was great. We had the place mostly to ourself and the routes where very interesting to climb. We are setting off now, back to Restaurante Popolo around the corner for more pasta – and as during the last 2 days ice cream and a stroll through old town.
