LUCERNE

I was going to combine Lucerne with...whatever we did next (I can't remember without looking at my itinerary, but I want to say...Interlaken?), but I feel like Lucerne deserves its own post.

Because Lucerne. Is. Amazing.

We left Yana's house early on Monday morning...but not early enough, because traffic into Zurich on a workday morning is ridiculous. UGH. If there was one semi-truck on the road, there were 1,000. It honestly felt like 2 trucks to every car. They were everywhere.

But I digress.


We bought what's called a SwissPass, a ticket for the three of us good for three consecutive days that would cover us for buses, trains, boats, and even some museums. All for the low, low price of something like $850. (Ish. Somewhere in that vicinity.)

We kind of took up a lot of space with our luggage...

Imagine our horror when we got off the train in Lucerne only to discover that our SwissPass had been misplaced. Jeanna had shown it to the conductor on the train, and she could not find it anywhere once we were off the train with all our luggage. Poor, poor Jeanna; I've never seen her look so panic-stricken in all the time I've known her, and I doubt I'll ever see her with that look on her face again. I told her I'd babysit our stuff while she and Jen went back to search the (really long double-decker) train. I prayed in my heart as I watched Jeans and Jen take off, and I prayed until they returned, that they'd find our SwissPass so we wouldn't have to drop another bucket of money on something we'd purchased roughly two hours prior...

Jen and Jeanna returned to me at a more relaxed pace, and I was pleased as punch to discover that one of the workers on the train found it. Bless their hearts for helping us out, and thank heaven that it was found before the train headed back to Zurich!

When we walked out of the train station, we were in awe of how gosh darned beautiful Lucerne is. It was hard to focus on which bus numbers when we wanted nothing more than to stop and stare.

We found our way to our lovely B&B where we tucked away our luggage, then we talked to the nice gal at the front desk to get the skinny on where to find what we were looking for.

Here are (some of) our pictures from Lucerne.

Floor three, room six.

First thing we did was head straight back to the center of town and hopped on a boat.
(SwissPass counted as our boarding pass. Score.)

We took pictures of the lake as we waited for our ship to come (literally, not figuratively).

Selfie time. Obviously.

How do you say "quack" in German?

The boat stopped at a few towns on the lake along the way; isn't it gorgeous?

More along the way...

After we got off the boat, we walked/hiked so we could hitch a gondola ride up to the top of Rigi Kulm.

I found Mr. Slugworth on our climb to the gondola.

From the gondola.

Jen, me and Jeans on the gondola ride up.

A clear day would've made for stunning views, but it's hard to get upset with this beautiful, misty fog.

After the gondola, we took a cogwheel train to the top.

I swoon...

/You belong among the wildflowers/

I was really quite taken with this fence.

Somewhere very near the top.

I brought some hucklebears from home to enjoy on our trip.

On the gondola ride down. Another photo bomb!

Walking back to the boat...

Red sunflowers. Who knew?

In most towns, we noticed a handful of freshwater fountains. So delicious!

Here's another one. Can't remember if this was in Lucerne or the village below Rigi Kulm...

There were thousands of bikes in Lucerne, and none of them were locked up.
Isn't that inspiring and lovely?

 Following our boat ride back to Lucerne, we walked around town and then went to a chocolate shop called Laderach. It was full to brim with Swiss Chocolate. 

You guys. Swiss chocolate is soooo amazing! I bought a ton of chocolate (for myself, but also for other people). I bought these chocolate truffles that my friend Travis told me about, and honestly, when I walked out of Laderach, I took a bite of an orange truffle, and it was so good I gasped out loud. People walking in the street turned to look at me, but I wasn't even ashamed because IT WAS THAT GOOD! 

After Laderach, we ate some sandwiches for dinner, then asked around to see where the Lion Monument was. Lots of Lucerne-ites didn't know what we were talking about, but we eventually got there, and it was too dark to take any pictures (bummer!), so we headed back to our B&B for the evening.

Now see here. The B&B where we stayed was an old three story home. Like, super old. Soooo...after my shower that night, I plugged my blow drier into the converter thing we borrowed from Willie, and...well...I killed the power. For all the bedrooms on the top floor. Fortunately there was still power in the bathroom when Jeanna was taking a shower, because that could've been a disaster. But the real problem was that there was nobody at the desk all night, so we couldn't even call someone to let them know what happened. We were without power all night. I mean, things could've been a whole lot worse, but we didn't get to charge our phones. And also, I was the one responsible. (You can bet your bottom dollar that we kept that information to ourselves at breakfast the following morning.)

This is a picture of Jeanna on FaceTime. In the dark. Because of me and my hair drier.

On Tuesday morning, we got up early so we could go back to the Lion Monument to snap some pictures, and it was totally worth it. To read the story of the Dying Lion Monument, go here.

It's in a quiet alcove near a school of some sort...maybe?

It's really quite beautiful...

A special thanks to my work friend, Travis, who spent some time in Europe earlier in the summer with his wife and daughter; they spent an entire day in Lucerne, and he basically planned our itinerary for our day there. (They went to Mt. Pilatus instead of Rigi Kulm; we were planning on doing Pilatus until we found out that their gondola wasn't working.) Lucerne is one of my favorite cities on planet earth.

More to come!