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Published: January 9th 2007
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Lucerne: Lions and Bears and Museums, oh my!
Lion Statue When we awoke, the rain was falling pretty hard which could put a damper on some people’s vacation but we don’t let a little rain stand in our way. After breakfast we put all of our rain gear on and set out for a day of site seeing. We were unsure what we were going to see other than the famous lion statue so we took the guide book with us and headed out.
The lion (lying with his head on a shield and crying tears due to a spear wound) is carved into a cliff about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and is supposed to symbolize the Swiss mercenaries who died defending the French King during the French Revolution. We walked through old town and took a few pictures of the Chapel Bridge which is a famous covered wooden bridge that crosses the River Reuss. Throughout the river and accompanying lake (Lake Lucerne) there are tons of birds many of which are swans - a gift to Lucerne from the French King Louis XIV. Thus, swans have lived in this town
for over 340 years. We of course took a few pics of the birds because they really are majestic swimming through the center of town.
We arrived at the Lion statue after about a mile and a half of walking and were pleased that it was pretty empty. During peak season the statue is crowded with hundreds of tourists fresh off of crowded tour busses. Today we were accompanied by only one tour of Japanese tourists. By the way, Japanese tour groups are everywhere…we have seen at least 10 of them in every major destination we have hit and have even seen a few of them in minor destinations like Fussen and Rothenberg.
Verkehrshaus Museum After a quick consultation with our trusty Rick Steves guide book we decided that the Verkehrshaus Museum would be our next destination. This museum is located right on Lake Lucerne, about 2 miles from old town or about another mile from our present point and is the Swiss transportation museum - similar to sections of our Smithsonian. As our regular readers probably have realized, we like museums that involve hands on fun so you won’t be surprised that this was
our top destination for the day.
As we walked around the lake I took some time to teach Kel about some of the manual functions on our camera. She was excited by the camera at this point so went crazy taking pictures of the town, birds, surrounding mountains and vistas so most of the pictures you see today are hers. She got some really good ones…I am proud of her if you can’t tell!
The museum was full of people who had the same idea we did; rainy days equal great museum days. The price was a little steep, Switzerland is very expensive, but after our time there I can say that the price is well worth it. The main exhibits consist of planes, cars, trains, boats and an IMAX theater.
The museum is full of hands on fun for all ages. We played like a bunch of 12 year olds but everyone was having fun so we didn’t stick out like a bunch of crazy Americans. My personal favorite exhibits were as follows: The cars exhibits which had some Formula One cars, some vintage Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and a copy of James Bonds Aston martin DB4 from
Goldfinger. The communication exhibit which had a full TV news setup which had been commandeered by one 12 year old who was screaming a play by play of a soccer match that he was watching on a monitor (it was really hilarious!!). The full radio station setup in the communication exhibit that Kel took a real liking to because it had her new favorite Madonna song loaded up. They also had neat simulators for all sorts of things, from parasailing to driving (drunk vs. sober reaction times demonstrated) and even flying a plane in a cockpit. We didn’t get to do all of them due to the lines of very excited kids surrounding most, but they were very cool to watch.
The whole museum is setup for people to have fun and do fun things. The Swiss have thought of everything that could make a museum education yet still fun. They even have scooters that people can use to move from building to building. Kel and I rode around on the scooters for a while just for something to keep us occupied. And it’s always fun to zoom!
Baren When we bought our tickets for
the museum we went ahead and got tickets for the IMAX movie at 4pm which was Baren (Bears). It seems that the bear movie was a popular one since every seat in the theater was taken when the lights went out to show the movie. We had gotten little hand held listening devices to be able to hear the movie in English which was kind of funny because the movie was originally made in English then overdubbed to German. While we were listening through our monitors we were hearing more information than the Swiss because some of the movie hadn’t been overdubbed but we were listening to the original soundtrack. Funny!
The movie was really great. It was about black bears, Grizzlies and Polar Bears. IMAX always does a great job of getting completely true to life images of whatever they are shooting. The Black Bear cubs were incredibly cute and had all the kids in the theater giggling. It was a fun 45 minutes!
After the movie we headed back home (by this time it wasn’t raining anymore) which is where we are now resting for dinner. Hope you are all doing well!
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