Category Archives: Switzerland

Day 19 – Arrival in Zürich

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Our trip is quickly coming to a close, as we are about to move on to our final destination in Switzerland. Today we check out of our Luzern hotel and make our way to Zürich, where we will stay for 2 nights before taking an early morning flight home.

We made our way to the train station in Luzern, and by the time we were ready to board the train, it was raining again. It’s a good time to be moving on, since it’s supposed to clear up in the late afternoon, by which time we’ll be in Zürich and hoping to do some exploring. Sure enough, just as forecasted, we arrived in Zürich under rainy skies, but after about an hour, things cleared up after we checked in to our hotel. We’re staying at the Storchen Zürich, which is a nice place right on the river.

Here we are having coffee on the hotel terrace as we wait for our room to be ready.

We started by walking around the river area by the hotel. Here is our hotel, which is located right at a river boat stop.

Here are some other pictures from around the Limmat river.

Like we have done in so many other places, we decided to take a tour by lake boat.

While it’s a very pretty area, it is hard not to compare Zürich to Luzern from where we had just come. My first impressions are that Zürich doesn’t quite compare to Luzern with it’s larger mountains surrounding the lake. It is also hard not to notice the amount of development around the Zürich area, in which much of the shoreline looks the same, with white houses packed along the hills surrounding the lake.

After the cruise we set out in search of dinner, where I had another nice schnitzel. Not quite as good as the one I had in Zermatt, but it was still pretty good. Here is our chosen restaurant, which came recommended to us. It’s a nice casual atmosphere, in an old armoury building just a couple minutes walk from the hotel, with great food.

After dinner, we walked around a bit to see the city at night.

Tomorrow would be our last full day in Switzerland, and based on the weather forecast, I think it will be a shopping and museum day, since we’re expecting a fair amount of rain. However, weather forecasts have been wrong before, so we’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

Day 18 – More Luzern

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While partially overcast and not ideal weather, the rain seems to be holding off, so we thought we’d visit Mt Rigi today. Once again, we walked down to the harbor to board a boat which would take us to Weggis. Here we are leaving the harbour in Luzern.

We arrived in Weggis, where we walked about 15 minutes up to the cable car station.

Every now and then, I see a sign posted that just makes me wonder, why is it even necessary to post something so stupid. This was in the washroom at the cable car station.  Anybody who needs to be given this instruction should not be allowed to roam the public streets.

Here we are riding the cable car up from Weggis to Rigi-Kaltbad.

At Rigi-Kaltbad, we waited a few minutes for the train to take us up to Rigi-Kulm.
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Up at the top of the mountain, we spent a couple of hours walking around and taking in the sights. Even with the cloud, there were still some nice views available. The photo below is looking toward Luzern.

This is looking over Lake Zug.

Notice the airplane flying below us in this image.

I noticed on the information board about the area, the writers feel free to “round up” in their statistics. It’s actually 1,797 m, not 1,800, which is close enough, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to round 5,896 feet all the way up to 6,000.  We weren’t all that high in elevation, actually not far different from the level of the towns of Zermatt or Murren, but relative to Lake Luzern, we were sitting about 1,360 meters above the surrounding lake below. Ready to take the first step towards expanding your family? Talk to your healthcare provider about whether clomid could be a potential option for you. Your path to parenthood could be closer than you think!

When it was time to head back, we took the train all the way down to the lake at Vitznau, where we transferred to a boat back to Luzern.

Back in town, we walked up to see the famous Löwendenkmal, also called the Lion Monument, carved into a rock face, which commemorates the Swiss guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution.

We then returned up the hill to the hotel.

Day 17 – Exploring Luzern

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The weather forecast for today was not good, but we had nice sunny skies when we went out after breakfast. We walked down to the water and explored the old town.

While the weather was good, we headed down to the harbour to catch a boat. The fountain below is at the harbour next to the museum and concert hall.

Here we are on the boat with the destination of Alpnachstad. From there, the plan is to take a train up Mt Pilatus.

While the boat ride was pleasant, we could see the clouds start to roll in, and by the time we reached the train station, we couldn’t see the top of Mt Pilatus. Therefore, we decided to return to Luzern, since it didn’t seem like a great plan to pay money to go up the mountain, only to see nothing but cloud.

Back at Luzern, there were still some sunny skies, so we decided to walk up the hill and walk the Musegg Wall.  Back in the early 1300s, nine towers and a rampart wall connecting them, were built around Luzern as a defence measure.  Much of this wall is still intact, and is open to the public.

Walking up a street on the way to the Musegg Wall…

At the base of one of the wall towers…

On top of the wall…

Here we are looking back up at the wall from the base of one of the towers near the end of the wall by the river. The race track you see next to the wall is because there is a school yard backing onto the wall.

This image is looking up at our hotel on the opposite side of the river, taken from the base of the wall.

Here we are back at the river and the end of the wall.

It’s been a rather full day, so we started walking back up the hill to our hotel.

Because today is Nadine’s birthday, we had a reservation for a nice dinner in the restaurant at our hotel. It’s an excellent restaurant with a fantastic view and a great chef. I recommend a dinner at the Château Gütsch restaurant if you find yourself visiting Luzern.

The picture below was taken just before dinner. You can see the clouds have rolled in, and it’s raining, but at least there’s a small rainbow in the distance. You can also see the Musegg Wall in this photo, and four of the towers.