Lucerne/Luzern

On the weekend Linda and I headed up to Lucerne. We had always heard it was one of the most beautiful of the Swiss towns, and one of the founding members of the Swiss confederation, and yet we had never before found the time to go.

Linda found us a room in a hotel with an amazing view over the river, an outlet of the lake of Lucerne, with the Chapel Bridge going across it.

We woke up on Saturday and it was cold and drizzly, although we quickly warmed ourselves up with some Apfelstrudel from the markets by the lake, and then with some coffee and pastries in one of the lakeside cafés.

We took advantage of the weather to wander around the markets, shops, and sites within the city, finishing up with a delicious dinner with some local cuisine.

On Sunday we watched some of the Lucerne Marathon, which happened to be on that weekend, visited a local art gallery and took ourselves off to the IMAX cinema which happened to be showing Die Alpen, a german translation of an American movie, which we listened to with our English earphones. This was slightly confusing to watch, but also very cool because we saw large parts of Switzerland, where we had lived or visited, up on the big screen.

When we came out we found the weather had really cleared up, so we could finally see the town and the lake as they were meant to be seen. We took a ferry back into Lucerne and then drove our car out towards Mount Pilatus, where we hoped to catch a train to the top where there should be a view over the lake and town.

Unfortunately we missed the last train, the timetable having just reverted to the winter schedule along with the start of daylight savings. This was a little disappointing as we were quite excited about catching the train, which has an exhilarating 48° gradient in parts. At least we found ourselves a view, driving a winding road up the hillside to a handy vantage point looking over the lake.

We resolved to come back to Lucerne for the Carnival celebrations, which are meant to be the most exciting in Switzerland, to see more of Lucerne and the surrounding countryside.