Switzerland Alpenventure: Luzern

 Luzern get 5 stars!  I love it!  Luzern often gets spelled by its French spelling of Lucerne, which is rather funny because it is in the German speaking part of Switzerland, so shouldn't it go by Luzern?  There also seems to be an emphasis in the first syllable: LOOTZ-ern.  

Yesterday morning I got up and got ready and said, "Let's seen when the next train to Luzern is?  Oh cool!  There's one in 5 minutes and one in 35 minutes and one in an hour(ish).  How cool is that to have all those options."  I figured I should be able to make the one in 35 mins though I wasn't sure, so I wasn't going to buy my ticket until I got to the train station, which was about a 15 min walk.  I had enough time to also get breakfast: a bretzel with ham (yes, spelled with a B, not a P).  I hopped on the train, took a seat and we set off about 10 minutes later.  The ride was pretty, but the area between Zurich and Luzern is still rather flattish.  You're still in the foothills of the Alps.  Before I knew it, the train was pulling into the station.

As is required, I walked out of the train station and turned the wrong direction (I also did that in Zurich, to carry on my tradition of always being turned around when leaving a station of any sort).  Maybe it was for the best because as I took my detour and eventually poured out into the area right near the river, I literally went "WOW!"  It was just so Europe.  This beautiful wooden bridge and such European buildings.  It was gorgeous. 

Lion Monument

It was too early to check into my hotel, but I was able to drop off my bags, and move my stuff I needed for the day into my smaller one.  Then I grabbed my headphones and set off for the Lion Monument, which was one end of the Luzern City App that had a self-guided audio tour available.  The Lion Monument was created back in the 1800s to honor the Swiss Guard that were injured and killed while protecting King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries Palace, when the revolutionaries attacked.  The monument has a dying lion protecting a shield with the Fleur-de-Lis on it representing the French royalty.

Hofkirche St Leodegar

Up next on the tour was Hofkirche St Leodegar.  Just as I was approaching, it started to ring noon.  It is surrounded by cemetery.  Upon walking up the stairs and in through the front door, my immediate thought was "This can't be Protestant.  Did this church not get Protestant Reformed?  This has to be Catholic."  And upon looking it up, it is indeed Catholic.  How can you tell?  All the gold and paintings and such.  Things that are mostly missing from Protestant churches.

Walls in the Weinmarkt

I next passed by the Kapellplatz and City Hall.  Both important parts of old Luzern.  Then I arrived at the Weinmarkt with is a square in town...or more of a triangle, that was known as a market place for wine...of course, but also a place were performances were held in the city.  The walls are also covered in paintings.  

Zytturm Clock Tower at Musegg

Then was a walk up to the Musegg Wall.  The Wall is a part of the city's old fortifications.  It consists of 9 towers and a wall connecting them.  One of the towers includes the Zytturm, which is the old clock tower.  In fact, it is the oldest clock in the city, which means that it has a special honor.  It gets to be the first clock to chime the hour in the city.  This basically means it chimes the hour about 2 minutes ahead of the other clocks.  It also means when you can fall asleep and the windows are open, you get to hear like 5 minutes of chiming every hours instead of one.  Ask me how I know.  

Counterweights and pendulum for Zytturm

The wall was pretty cool, but totally hot inside.  It had steep steps, and was quite hot inside.  The Zytturm tower had old clock mechanisms inside of it from other clock towers in the area. You could also see the long pendulum and counterweights that kept the clock working.  You could walk across the ramparts between a few of the towers, and then you could go up one of the towers furthest from the lake.  That one had an open roof and a great view!

One of the things you could see from the roof of the Musegg Wall, was the Spreuerbrucke, a bridge across the Reuss River.  This bridge is an old wooden bridge, but not THE old wooden bridge that crosses the river.  This one is also quite old, and is at a place in the river were it was by the mills.  It is named Spreuer because of the chaff that was removed from the threshing of wheat and tossed in the river at the bridge.  The bridge has a series of paintings in the trusses.  The series includes skeletons doing things like serving dinner or out at sea or in a meeting.  The idea of it being that no one escapes death, no matter your station in life.  

Speruerbruck

Just upstream of the Speruerbrucke is the the Needle Dam.  The lake is controlled by this dam, which allows for water to be let out of the lake.  It is a rather unique dam and has been controlling lake flow since the 1860s.

Jesuitenkirche

The last major church I stopped by was the Jesuitenkirche.  It is a beautiful Catholic church and there was a choir rehearsing inside for a free concert that was going to be held the next day.  I unfortunately wasn't going to be back in time to go to it.  But the little bit of of one song that I hear, sounded great!

Archway at Luzern Railway Station

I chose to bypass THE bridge and make my way down to the rail station, where out front of it is a large archway.  The arch stood as an entrance into the rail station from 1896, until a fire burned down the station in 1971.  The fire was so massive that the domed roof collapsed.  They rebuilt the station and kept the archway out front of the new one as a sort of welcome to the city.

Kapellbrucke

To end my tour of the city, I made my way to the famed Kapellbrucke.  There is a decent chance that you've seen a picture of this bridge before.  The bridge and water tower have graced the Reuss River since 1360.  It has changed a bit over the years, being shortened, but eventually ended up in its current form.  And then in 1993, tragedy struck when the bridge caught fire.  Most of the bridge was burned down with just small sections of it remaining.  But it being such a historic part of their city, it was rebuilt in 8 months.  They kept some of the charred beams in place as recognition to what had happened.  Like the Speruerbrucke, it had paintings up in the trusses.  Some of those have been restored, while others are still blackened from the fire.  And some look fine because they weren't on the bridge when the fire occurred.  They had been removed during one of the bridge's remodels in the centuries before, but the paintings had been kept, so those ones are no on the bridge.

Kapellbrucke

Day two of Luzern mostly didn't actually take place in Luzern.  Instead it took place at Mt Pilatus (Pih-lah-toos).  Pilatus isn't actually a single mountain, but a group of mountain peaks that sticks up above Lake Luzern.  You have a couple of options to get to the top of the mountain, but if you want the full experience, you go with the Golden Round Trip.  This involves a bus ride, a gondola ride, a cable car ride, a cog rail ride, and a boat ride.  You can experience them in this order, or backwards.  There was also a short walk of a couple hundred meters between the bus and the gondola.  Pilatus is a name I was already familiar with because it is the name of a Swiss aircraft company...literally within view of Pilatus (the mountain).  

Cable Car at Pilatus

Pilatus rises about 2000 ft from the lake, or roughly 7000 ft asl.  It also has a huge dragon myth behind it.  Something about a dragon living on Pilatus and it protecting a sacred rock with healing powers.  But anyways, up at the top are two hotels and two restaurants, along with a visitor center.  There are also trails to the top of a few of the peaks up there.  From the panorama deck of the visitor center you can see beautiful views of the lake in one direction and the big Alps in the other direction.  On clear days you can see Jungfraujoch and the Eiger.  

On the cable car ride up I saw a small chapel on a ridge and people hiking up to it.  I wasn't sure I wanted to hike up to it, but it turns out you could hike down to it (and then back up).  From the top, I think it is a shorter trip than from the bottom.  I mean, I had already paid for the cable car ride up, right?  So I might as well use it.  The hike was a bit of a struggle.  Probably 1) because I had gotten almost no sleep during the night 2) I was running on Coke (I needed the caffeine) and a roll.  Not ideal.  Kinda dumb.  But I had decided I was waiting to eat until I got down there.  

View of the chapel from the cable car on the way up.

The trail wasn't an easy one.  Rocky.  But the views were great and I could hear cowbells, though I never placed where the cows actually were.  I made it down to the chapel, and set myself down for lunch.  My lunch was bread and cheese.  Standard Swiss fare.

View from lunch at the chapel.

After the trip back up I had some time to spare because I had a ticket down for 3:35, so I climbed to the top of another peak I hadn't been to and then sat down in a beach chair, in the shade.  Everyone else was in the sun, but I know what color my skin is, so I sat in the shade.

Fun fact, I found out my family has a mountain in the Swiss Alps.  One called Furststein.

The ol' family mountain, which I will observe from a distance.

When my time came, I boarded the steepest cog in the world to head back down.  The cog reaches 48% grade at times.  The views were great on the way down.  

After the cog was the boat ride.  The boat stopped a couple of times along the way at other stops, before ending up back in Luzern.

I grabbed dessert on my way back from the harbor to my hotel.  I had scoped out the strawberry cake the day before, but wasn't hungry for it.  I had said, "I'll come back for you later."  After getting back to the hotel, it was time for a refreshing shower, which included showering with my hiking shirt on. Sometimes you have to be creative with washing.  So I soaped it up really good and washed it off, then took it off and did the inside.  I also soaped up my bra and did the same.  It works out well since they're quick dry materials.  I will do a proper washing at some point, but if I can, I'll push it off as long as possible.  Maybe eventually I won't even need to.  I've slowly acquired a bunch of wool shirts which are great for traveling because they don't absorb bad odors.

Anyways, off to Gimmelwald next!