Great day in Lucerne!

Today we had a great day in Lucerne. We were up and out fairly early this morning and caught the 9:00 train. It's only about an hour ride from Basel, so it was an easy way to start the day. When we arrived in Lucerne, we inquired at the tourist office about what we should do and learned more about the two mountains there: Rigi and Pilatus. In general, I think you hear more about Rigi, but we opted to go to Pilatus, and it was well worth it!

We started with a lake cruise around Lake Lucerne and another lake that is connected to that. The journey takes anywhere from 50 to 90 minutes, so you have quite a lot of time to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery. The boat is two stories and I think it's absolutely worth it to pay a few more dollars for first class, where you get to sit up top.

On the way to Pilatus

After you get off the boat you then take the world's steepest cog train up to the top of the mountain. The cog train is a remarkable piece of work and is very comfortable for the journey up. The cars are built to handle the ascent and decent and look as if they would not be able to sit flat on a track if needed. The train ride up took about 40ish minutes.

The clouds started rolling in as we got to the top, but luckily we did have the chance to snap some pictures of the view, including all the way down to the lake. Before we did any hiking, we stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants at the top, then headed to the highest point on the mountain at 7,000 feet. The top of the mountain offers five additional points to hike/walk to while you're up there. We chose to do the hardest one, so we only had time to do that specific trail.

View from the top

The Lake is way down below

After we did our hiking at the top of the mountain, we took a cable car down the other side of the mountain. The line is daunting when you first get in it, but it goes pretty quickly, with cable cars coming up every five minutes or so. The ride down can be a bit scary at times, but only because you hanging so far up in the air and some of the descents are a little bit steeper than expected. It was a nice change of pace and something new and different to try.

View of cable car from half way down the mountain

About half-way down the mountain you have to stop and switch the type of cable car you're in. At the top the cars are quite big and hold a lot of people. At the half way point they switch to small cars that hold four people. When we hit this point, BK and BM noticed there was a toboggan track at this stop. We stopped there and they enjoyed flying down the track, although they both admitted to crashing at some point on the course. Luckily, no serious harm done.

View of toboggan run from cable car

After they finished their fun here we loaded into our smaller cable car and finished our descent. When you get down off the mountain you're not quite in Lucerne, so you take Bus 1 to the city center. It's about a 15 minute ride.

We had the evening in Lucerne and decided to go see the Lion Monument, walk around old town and see the Chapel Bridge and Water Tower. The Lion Monument is worth a visit and is different from what I was expecting. It's not your typical sculpture, but instead is carved into the side of the mountain. It's a memorial to fallen Swiss soldiers from the 1700s. The Lion Monument is also quite striking because it's of a lion who has been defeated, which is not usually how this strong animal is portrayed.

After this we walked around and visited a cathedral and the Chapel Bridge- both of which are interesting. The bridge is the oldest in Switzerland and has been beautifully maintained. The cathedral was kind of something we just stumbled upon after seeing the Lion Monument, but was worth the stop to explore both the grounds, as well as inside of the church.

We ended our day on a very non-Swiss note and had Mexican food at a local restaurant. The food was good, but I don't think I'm used to eating it any more. After dinner we headed back to Basel on the train, enjoying lots of laughs along the way. Tomorrow we head to Venice, which is then followed by Vienna and Salzburg. Our fun is just getting started!