Lucerne, Switzerland

For the August bank holiday, we went to Lucerne ... and LOVED it. I loved Switzerland when I took a trip in college and I love Switzerland even more now after our visit. The country is beautiful!

We departed early Saturday for our long weekend in Lucerne and arrived mid-day. We quickly checked-in to our hotel and set out for a late lunch. As we were dining on the later end of the lunch hour, we were one of the few in the restaurant and the owner chatted us up quite a bit. As a welcome to Lucerne, he gave us free glasses of wine!

We then meandered through the old town to Lucerne's famous Lion Monument honoring the brave who served in war.

After viewing the Lion Monument we headed towards Kapellbrucke (Chapel Bridge). The Chapel Bridge is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe and the world's oldest surviving truss bridge. The bridge spans diagonally across the Reuss River connecting old and new town Lucerne. The interior of the bridge contains a number paintings that originally dated back to the 17th century but have since been restored after a fire in 1993.

We walked along the bridge and headed back across on another pedestrian bridge to relax at a cafe on the river.

For dinner that evening, we dined at an establishment that is known for serving its appetizers and desserts in mini mason jars. The mini jars were delicious! Our favorite appetizer jar was the gherkin soup. Who knew gherkins would taste even better in liquid form? For dessert, we got ice-cream with whipped cream. The whipped cream serving was the same size, if not bigger than our ice-cream. The Swiss sure are proud of their dairy products.

The next morning we set out to explore Mt. Pilatus. We took a boat from Lucerne to Alpnachstad; in Alpnachstad we hopped on the Pilatus railway, the world's steepest cogwheel train, to access the peaks. We explored at the top of Mt. Pilatus for a bit before taking a cable car mid-way down the mountain. At the cable car stop mid-way down, you had the option to continue down the mountain via hiking or gondola or stay at the drop-off point and do a ropes course or toboggan ride.

We opted for the ropes course. I loved the ropes course...Shane not so much. We both were having fun, myself being a good sport when Shane laughed at me when I got stuck on the zip-line and didn't have enough arm strength to pull myself up, Shane not being a good sport when he got stuck in a net. The net was the end of our ropes course adventure.

We took the gondola to the bottom of the mountain and caught a bus back to Lucerne.

On our last day in Lucerne, we had a late breakfast in the hotel and then set-out to explore Lucerne's glacier/city museum. The museum was a bit of hodge podge ... glacier ruins, historic old swiss home, mirror maze, vantage point, etc. ... but was extremely well done and fun to explore. After the museum, we grabbed our final swiss snack, ice-cream and chocolate, and headed to the station to catch our train to Basel for our flight.