Jeff&Mary - Switzerland '11: Day 13: Luzern

Jeff woke up at 7am and decided to go for a quick walk down to the water to take some pictures. He was planning on being a few minutes but did not take a key to the exterior door. He got locked out. Due to this fact Jeff walked around a little more and took some pictures of the surrounding mountains with the sun coming up. Here is an image from the morning:

Around 8:15 we ate breakfast. The yogurt we bought was from a Migros. The quality was much lower than the yogurt we purchased from the Coop. There were no real vanilla beans in the vanilla yogurt and it was not as thick. After breakfast we decided that we would go for a walk in the old town before deciding what destination we would go to. Both mountains, Rigi and Titlis, were shrouded in clouds.

The walk around the old town was nice; we saw all the historic squares and some buildings. One square, the Kornplatz, was the grain market during medieval times. We also managed to walk up the old city wall. There are approximately six towers that are still intact. You can only walk along the wall between three towers.

Mary was still intent on finding her cuckoo clock, so we did some searching. We were unable to find any Swiss made cuckoo clocks during the morning. All the souvenir stores seem to carry cuckoo clocks, just not Swiss made. In addition, the Asian tourist population in this area is high compared to elsewhere that we have travelled. Not surprising, it would seem that all of the shops are run by people with Asian background.

We headed back to the hostel around 10:30. On the way back we saw something interesting on a bicycle. All we could say was WOW:

We checked mountain webcams in order to decide which mountain we wanted to go up. Mount Titlis and Pilatus were heavily clouded. Rigi was not as heavily clouded. We decided that because Titlis and Pilatus were clouded we would go up Rigi, only 1800 metres high. Mount Rigi is free with our Swiss Pass. We are still hoping to go up a larger mountain.

We took a lake steamer at noon for one hour to get to the bottom of Rigi. The boat is actually faster than travelling there by land. Unfortunately, Mary got motion sick and did not bring her motion sickness ginger pills. Jeff had no troubles and ended up taking many pictures on the trip to Rigi:

We arrived and went directly to the cogwheel train. The cogwheel railway started operation on May 21, 1871 and was the first mountain railway in Europe. The tracks were electrified in the 20^th century, the first electrified standard gauge cog-railway in the world.

The trip up was bumpy extremely bumpy. We had situated ourselves at the front, in the old style car. The entire train was not old, it had a new engine that was electric and had a passenger area. Here is a picture from the ride up:

We also spotted a farmers large collection of large cow bells!

On a side note, the rock here is really interesting. It looks to be all of one type. I will try to bring a souvenir back for the Geographer to comment on the type of rock (I want to see who is reading this blog) (Mary’s note: Jeff states firmly that it must be a Geographer that comments. I find this amusing.). Rigi is technically not part of the Alps, it is part of the Swiss plateau. As one might guess, it is not composed of the same type of rock. In addition, the name Rigi comes from the term Riginen which is the stratification that is visible on the mountain.

When we arrived at the top of the mountain, it was not very cloudy. However, the clouds started to roll in just as we reached the top. At one point the entire mountain top was covered in cloud, we could not see the giant cellular tower that was a mere 50 meters away! Despite the cloud, our patience eventually paid off and we eventually saw the surrounding countryside:

This is the view we had initially:

When the cloud was extremely thick, Bear and Mary decided to get a touristy shot together:

We decided to walk along down to the next lower station before getting back on the train to head down. We are glad we did because there were some good views (Mary’s Note: At least Jeff was. I was much too worried about walking down a steep slope with already sore legs, and reaching the bottom in time to meet the train…) We had a short wait, so Jeff took some pictures. The wait also gave us an opportunity to rest. We heard cow bells for the first time during our entire trip! (If you stood quietly, you could hear the soft clang of the bells on the nearby slope).

Once the train came we got on and took the very slow journey down to the stop just below the top. We got off and walked to a cable car. Once the car got moving it would quickly drop and sway every time we went past a support pillar. People seemed to find this very exciting. (Mary’s note: haha, “very exciting”, jeeze, people were shrieking!) At the bottom we ran into some Americans, one from California and the other from Chicago, they were doing a European tour.

At this point it was approximately 3:50, we had 20 minutes to get over to the boat pier and get on the boat. When the boat finally arrived we learned that everyone who did not get off the train was on the boat. It was packed. All the outdoor seats were taken. Mary ended up sitting inside near the centre of the boat. Mary was feeling motion sick from the second she got on the boat. (Mary’s note: Not quite the second, but near to it. The boat was packed full, and it took a while to find a place to sit. And during the search, I had to be on the outside where it was moving up and down quite a bit…) The boat trip lasted approximately 45 minutes. We arrived in Luzern and got off the boat as quickly as we could.

We needed food so we went out towards the old town. On the way to the Coop (we wanted to buy some wine, Migros does not sell alcohol), we stopped into several tourist shops to see if there were any cuckoo clocks. There were many! However, all of them were Black Forest region style cuckoo clocks, not Swiss Made cuckoo clocks. Mary is starting to get frustrated.

For dinner, we had basically the same as yesterday, with the addition of a bottle of wine and sausages. Jeff's Roetzi didn't turn out as nicely, on account of terrible cookware.