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Published: June 24th 2008
Gondola
The gondola we travelled up in during the first leg up the mountain.Wednesday 28th May
A minor disaster this morning at breakfast.
Owen has had quite extensive orthodontic work done during his teens. Although all the work has been completed, he still has a wire running across the back of his teeth, and needs to wear a retainer plate when sleeping a t night (just to make sure his fangs don't remember where they used to be and attempt to move back into residence).
During breakfast the wire on his leftmost tooth broke free, leaving him with a pointy piece of metal uncomfortably scratching his tongue from time to time (especially when eating). Luckily the hotel had provided a list of useful phone numbers, along with the rest of the room information, and this included a dentist. He was unable to see Owen today, but could manage an early appointment tomorrow.
Lucerne's expected top temperature was 30 and it was heading that way in the morning, bright sun and no breeze. We spent the morning doing some boring, but necessary, housekeeping and shopping chores
We had booked the "Golden Round Trip" for today; up to the top of Lucerne's "home mountain" Pilatus. This is the mountain that looms
Mt Pilatus
Mt. Pilatus, towering over the city of Lucerne. over the town. The trip began by taking a small gondola (max 4 persons) for a 15 minute ride three quarters of the way up the mountain from Lucerne to Frakmuntegg. Some of the views of the lake and mountainside on the way up were stunning and you are accompanied all the way up by the sound of cow bells from the cattle grazing below you.
Marion, who is not wonderful when it comes to heights, panicked when the gondola stopped part way up, but quickly regained her composure when the cable began moving again.
Frakmuntegg is a fairly flat section of the mountain at just over 1400m and has a playground, an adult's adventure park (negotiating difficult bridges, using flying foxes, etc), the world's longest summer toboggan run and some shops.
We then took a 5 min trip in a large gondola (with a capacity of around 30) up to a flat plateau at 2068m near the peak of Pilatus. On the way up the clear sky became cloudy and little could be seen out of the gondola. Then we seemed to break through a barrier and we were above the cloud. The mountain was only
Scenery
The scenery we were treated to out of our window over lunch! meters away and we could see masses of snow that were still surviving despite Lucerne's warm spring,
On the plateau the cloud seemed to broil and froth from below. The way the wind whipped it up from lower down the mountain it looked like the boiling, bubbling foam in the beakers and test tubes in a horror movie lab. Also on the plateau there are a couple of restaurants, a hotel, and, of course, a gift shop. We had 1½ hours there and, in addition to eating lunch, you had the choice of a couple of not too-strenuous walks to a nearby high point or a longer one to the actual peak of the mountain.
While eating lunch we had a bird's eye view of a large "bowl" area below Pilatus Kulm, almost like a volcano's crater on one side of Pilatus. The "crater" had large areas of bare rock, but most of it retained a smattering of icy snow. We found that our minds played tricks on us with regard to the scale of the mountain. Your mind compresses it to a comprehensible size, but this illusion was shattered when two walkers who were traversing the crater
Walkers
The two people hiking are the left-most dot on the path, in the centre f the picture. How's that for perspective?! rapidly became small specks we could hardly see. It made the immense size of the scene inescapable.
After lunch we quickly browsed the gift shop and Owen bought a red tee-shirt with SWISS emblazoned on it and a cow leaping above it in a similar pose to the puma on PUMA merchandise. I bought a more restrained polo shirt, and headed off for Esel which is the nearby high point of 2118m. The actual peak was visible but seemed to be surrounded by swirls of cloud, whereas Esel seemed relatively clear.
To reach Esel you ascended a rocky stairway (clearly manmade) up to a large flat viewing platform atop the hill. Fortunately, appearances were not deceiving, and beautiful views down the mountain were visible in a couple of directions. The continual surging of clouds from down below appearing and then spilling up and over the inside edge of the "bowl" of the mountain near the peak, was also quite spectacular from this vantage point. I descended down the hill, to see a snow ball fight amongst the younger members of the tour group, including Owen hovering around the edges with a snowball whose dimensions were similar to that
Mist
Mist swirled upward, frothing from below. of a basketball.
To return down the other side of the mountain we were going to use the "world's steepest cogwheel train". A cogwheel train has a second set of wheels with teeth which mesh into an extra double line of tracks near the centre of the rail line which stop the train from slipping down the tracks. These trains do not run as fast as standard trains. The carriages in this version were also raked so that the passengers further back in the carriage were higher than those in front of them, giving everyone a forward view.
As mentioned above the cogwheel train is much slower than a normal train and takes 40 minutes to make the descent. (Indeed perhaps this should be advertised as the "world's slowest cogwheel train"). Although there were some pleasant views on the way down, it was nowhere near as spectacular as the side of the mountain we had ascended.
We then boarded a boat which was to take us from the Alpnacher See, which is connected to the Vierwaldstattersee (Lake Lucerne), by a narrow strait. It was still quite warm down at Lucerne level but there was a welcome cool
Fog
Eventually, the fog barrier got as thick as this! breeze blowing. The boat took 90 minutes to complete the journey, criss-crossing the lake. While the views were pleasant they were not overly thrilling.
Some thoughts on the "Golden Round Trip".
1, Don't pre-order this with a company on-line as we did.
The tourist Information Centre is very helpful and switched-on and can sell you (or explain your options) for all the tickets required to do the trip. This will save you quite a deal of money. Apart from the cost, the other problem doing it group-wise is that it limits your options. Both Owen and I would've liked to give the toboggan run a try or two, but we didn't have the choice of staying at Frakmuntegg for a while before catching the large gondola to go further up the mountain..
2. Consider descending by gondola.
The scenery on the other side of the mountain is not as good, I suspect the train's real purpose is to allow people staying at the hotel an easy way of transporting their luggage to the top of Pilatus. The boat ride is fine providing you don't mind a 1.5 to 2 hour relaxing cruise; it just seemed an awfully
Snowball
Owen and his snowball - at about half it's eventual size! long trip for what it gave us - but then we enjoyed a sit by the lake yesterday so, it depends upon what you are after.
Once we were back in Lucerne we freshened up to have dinner at Stadtkeller. This is described as a "Swiss Folklore Restaurant"; for a superb combination of good food, music and fun (or so the advertising brochure promises). If you wish to attend this establishment you will need to book ahead; we had originally intended going last night but it was booked out, and tonight also appeared to be a full house.
You get to choose from a number of menus (and prices) when you book, but all meals start with a cheese Fondue. (Not one of my favourite dishes, but Owen and Marion found it far superior to the one they had eaten a couple of days earlier in Geneva. The rest of the meal was good and solid while not outstanding.
The entertainment was quite varied and included Swiss folk music, yodeling, alphorn blowing and flag throwing. One of the more interesting features of the venue was that the performers were performing for two rooms of patrons at
Cogwheel Train
The cogwheel train, which took us down from Mt. Pilatus. right -angles to each other. That's why in several of the photos some of the band members on the left-hand edge of the stage are sitting side-on; they are facing the other room (which you may be able to glimpse).
The entertainment was introduced (and received) in a music hall type atmosphere. There were a couple of tables of rowdy Austrians near us and Marion got quite animated and told them to quiet up during some of the women's more delicate singing (I tried to tell her that it wasn't supposed to be a concert hall performance). A kind of poetic justice occurred when one of the Austrians volunteered as one of the victims attempting to play an alpenhorn, but was introduced as an Australian! Neither he nor his companions were particularly impressed.
You need to approach this night with the right expectations; serious music nights usually don't have performers dressed as a pantomime cow wending its way through the audience trying to "lick" the ears of patrons, nor does it have "marks" from the audience sculling after attempting to yodel. In spite of this, the two tables of noisy Austrians lessened Marion's enjoyment of the night.
Stadtkeller
The Stadtkeller band, playing for us before the full show began. We walked back to our hotel via the Chapel Bridge. This was lit at night and Marion was aghast to find it a "Hilton hotel for spiders". The spiders had spun webs near the lights and as a result had a veritable feast of moths and other insects to munch on. Somehow Marion made it across the bridge (I think with her eyes closed some of the way).
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