Tuesday 24th May
Roughly a 30 min trip from our mountain retreat to the city centre. Apparently a taxi would cost around 120 euro.
View from our roomThe first place we stopped was at a monument to Swiss Guard members who were killed. It is a wounded lion with a shaft in his side. it is carved into the side of a small cliff.!because the sculptor was not paid his full fee,he sculpted the cave surrounds into a subtle pig shape.
On to the Chapel Bridge.This is a long covered wooden bridge build as a defence from attack.It has higher sides lakeside than the other.It has images on the roof crossbars. It burnt down,but some parts were saved and the rest rebuilt.
Like many other cities, Lucerne has paintings and murals on the walls of the buildings, as well as strange groups of people.
Atop a cliff behind the shopping area is the old city walls. The wall is punctuated by a series of watch towers (one of which has been converted to a clocktower), and there is a rather dodgy-feeling walkway that runs the length of the wall. Not only is this walkway narrow and unsolid, but it slopes heavily away from the wall so the water runs off.
Sometimes we make bad decisions in life.
One of mine was to decide to climb the steps to the wall, then the steep steps up the wall itself, and an even worse one to climb to the top of the clocktower.By my count 3,246,321 steps to get there, and the last dozen were narrow and high. By the time I got to the top,my legs and lungs were informing me of the stupidity of my decision, and that we still had to go back down!!!
The starting stairs that tempted me, evil lurks in the simplest of things:
Mid afternoon started with a placid boat ride on the picturesque Lake Lucerne, with little indication of what was to come…
STANSERHORN!!
The first part was the easy part – a bus ride to the tram station.Then a finicular tram running steeply up the mountainside.Then halfway up, a changeover to a cable car with an open top deck.
Spectacular views until we hit the clouds.
Most smiled on the trip, but Pauline showed some trepidation:
And some evil intent:
Final stage was a steep walk through the snow to the summit at 1900m. Everything was covered in snow, even the picnic tables, with a few flowers and branches peeking through.
Also starting to stick its nose out of its burrow was a marmot – a very cute one at that.
Elvis also proved he was a dead-eye-dick with a snowball!
At the summit
