Lucerne Switzerland
Sunday June 26 – We arrived in Lucerne a little after lunch on Sunday. The train station was about a 5 minute walk from our hotel, the Boutique Hotel Zum Weisses Kruez, so we dropped our bags off and set out in town.
The first place we decided to go was the Lucerne Lion Monument. On the way, we stopped and grabbed some lunch and dessert. The Lion Monument was craved in stone as a memorial to fallen soldiers at the Tuilerires in 1792. There were quite a few tourists when we arrived but we managed to find a little spot off to the side to have our lunch. I tried to get Matt to take a selfie but he thought it was disrespectful so we didn’t (though there were tons of others doing it.)
After we ate lunch, we headed back for town. As we were walking we noticed a church on a hill so we walked up to check it out. It was very pretty inside. We then headed over to the City Wall to check that out. After a LOT of stairs, we reached the wall. You could walk up to the top and then walk across the wall. The views from the top of the wall were amazing! Had it not been kind of cloudy it would have been even better.
We got to the other side and walked back down, this put us on the back side of the wall so we followed the path down to the road. We (at least I) had no clue where we would end up, but as we followed the road we found ourselves just on the other side of the river from our hotel. One cool thing about Lucerne are the wooden walking bridges that cross the river. Once we crossed back over we decided to stop at one of the hotel bars for a drink overlooking the river.
After walking back to the room for a nap, we set out to find dinner. Around trip around the city center ended with us back at the hotel restaurant, where I had a wonderful lasagna. When dinner was finished we decided to walk down the river on the other side and check it out. Since it didn’t get dark till close to 10 pm we were able to enjoy the sights around us for a while.
Monday June 27 – The other thing we had planned for Lucerne was Mount Piltaus. There were several options on how to get up and down the mountain and Matt choose the Silver Ticket for us. This included a cogwheel up and a cable car down to a bus. It was about a 30 minute train ride to reach to the cogwheel station. Once at the station, we piled into a little train car thing with 6 other people and set off up the mountain. As we were going, the conductor informed us this was the steepest cogwheel in the world and that it was built in the 1800’s. :O I had a seat by the window so I could take pics and OMG, it was breathtakingly beautiful! And also very, very steep! I was facing up, and I think I’m glad about that! You couldn’t quite tell exactly how steep it was from that angle. (I’m pretty sure there is no way in hell I would have gone back down the cogwheel!)
After trudging up the mountain for about 30 minutes, we finally reached the summit. Unfortunately, it was clouded in but Matt and I walked around to check things out. We ended up going to the smaller summit before deciding if we wanted to try to largest one. In the end, we decided not to since the top was completely cloudy.
Since the clouds weren’t breaking we hopped on a cable car down to Pilatus Kulm. Situated about half way down the mountain, there was an adventure park that included rope walks, zip lines, and a toboggan run. We grabbed a coffee, enjoyed the views and watched people on the adventure courses. When we decided we were ready, we grabbed a smaller cable car for the decent down. This was definitely the way to go down! Stunning views of the treetops and city, it was a different view from the mountains on the way up.
Once we were down and back to town, we decided to walk back around the city since it was sunny and looked completely different. Now I have pics of cloudy Lucerne and sunny Lucerne! 😉 That night we went to a place called Jill’s Burgers for dinner. The food was good ( and the menu in English – most places had menus in Italian, German and Japanese). While we were eating dinner the Euro 2016 was going on between Italy and Spain. As soon as the game was over and Italy had won, we started hearing car horns! This continued on for a quite a while so Matt and I walked up to the main street to see a line of traffic and people lining the streets celebrating the win! It was actually really cool to see!
We went back to the room and watched England lose to Iceland.
The next morning, we were woken up at about 5:30 am to the loud as crap sound of the street sweeper! This continued for a good 15 minutes. We had an early train to catch on our way to Paris and the street sweeper didn’t really make my day!