Oct 27, 2015
This morning, we got up, had breakfast at the
hotel, packed up, checked out, and went for a quick walk around Old Town Zurich
again. We decided we wanted to visit Grossmunster before we left the city, so
we headed over there.
The inside of Grossmunster was absolutely
beautiful. Unfortunately, you can't take photos inside, so there's nothing to
show.
After visiting the church, we headed back to the
hotel, along the river one more time. Since we had already checked out, we
waited in the lobby until it was time to go. People started showing up &
waiting with us, so that was good.
We verified our luggage & got on the bus
when it was time. It was about a 2 hr drive to Lucerne (or Luzerne) on the less
traveled and more scenic roads. We stopped in the town of Brunnen for lunch.
Jon & I ate at a little place called Kombuse (which means "the
galley").
After lunch, it was back on the bus to the town
of Vitznau to board the boat for our ride to Lucerne. Since it was such a
beautiful day, even if it was a little cold, we decided to stay up on the
sundeck for the hour long ride. Only 4 of us lasted the entire trip (with most
people leaving in the first 15 minutes).
Once in Lucerne, we headed to our hotel
(Raddison Blu), got our carry on bags & keys to the room, got settled in a
bit, and then decided what to do. Veronika was taking everyone who wanted to go
on an orientation walk at 6pm, but she was recommending people went out on
their own while the sun was still out. We took her up on the recommendation and
started to wander about for a little bit.
We ended up having dinner at Unicum. The chicken
here was amazingly good. Service everywhere is slower than in the US, so that's
taken some getting used to. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel &
settled in for an early night.
Oct 28, 2015
We took our walking tour of Lucerne this
morning. Unlike in Zurich, we were able to go into the churches here. We
visited the wooden bridge – which was originally built in the 1300s, but mostly
burned down in the 1970s. They rebuilt it and you almost can’t tell the
difference of where was rebuilt. The two original parts (the ends) are much
darker than the newer parts. With time, they’ll be closer in color.
As we walked down the river, we were able to go
into the church and sat for a bit while our tour guide told us some of the
history of the church. The church never belonged to a perish and was a teaching
church. It was done in the Baroque fashion.
We then walked over another bridge and around
Old Town Lucerne a bit more. She pointed out one building that was painted
depicting Carnival. Our tour guide left us and we were on our own for lunch. We
ate at Manor (a department store which had a café and rooftop terrace). Our
cruise manager, Veronika, and her husband, Joe, came up to the rooftop terrace,
so we invited them to join us. It was nice getting to know them a bit more.
After lunch, we headed to the hotel for a little
bit of down time before we left for the Mt Pilatus excursion (this one is an
optional excursion). http://www.pilatus.ch/en/
Around 1:45, the excursion was under way. We
rode the bus about 15-20 minutes to base of Mt Pilatus. From there, our tour
guide got our tickets and we all got into the cog wheel train for the ride up
the mountain. We saw a couple of people hiking up the mountain. I’d love to
come back some day and give it a try! The ride up was pretty cool. The steepest
incline was 48% - twice!
Once we got to the top of the mountain, our tour
guide gave us some information & quick instructions (when to meet back,
etc), and we were free to explore. One member of our group was having some
altitude sickness (trouble breathing), so that party was sent back down the
mountain. (Also, a good warning that it can happen even with a 40 minute ride
up.)
We decided to head up another walkway to one of
the two peaks. It was absolutely beautiful up there! We thought about heading
up the walkway to the other peak, but I wasn’t crazy with where the stairs were
located on it (too many facing the “end of the earth” for my liking. We also
walked through a cave path, which was interesting. It had the story about the
dragon mountain in it.
Around 4:15, we all met up to head back down the
mountain. Apparently, our group was supposed to have a dedicated car (to keep
us all together). That didn’t get communicated to all of the staff working and
didn’t end up happening. We were in the last set of cars going down for the
day, so pretty much everyone ended up in one of two cars. It all worked out
pretty well.
The trip down the mountain was just as
interesting as the trip up. I thought it was especially interesting that the
tree line was at 4500 ft. It was easy to figure out when we had passed that,
based on the trees reappearing.
Once down the mountain, we boarded the bus and
headed back to the hotel. Jon decided he wasn’t really in the mood to go
explore Lucerne any more, so we went to the hotel restaurant, Luce, for dinner.
Service was incredibly slow. I guess we should
stop complaining about slow service in the U.S. Dinner (entrees and dessert)
took two hours. It was also next to impossible to get information about which
menu items were gluten free. I really don’t understand the whole “tell me what
you want & we’ll go from there” mentality. How about you tell me what you
all can do, like I requested, and we’ll go from there. It’s easier for me to
make a decision if I know what you can and can’t do. Sigh. This was probably
the hardest ordering I’d done on the trip so far. At the end of the evening
though, dinner was really good.
After dinner, we decided to call it a night. We
have an early morning tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment