Luzern (‘Lucerne’ in English) in Switzerland 24 and 25 October 2013

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Luzern (‘Lucerne’ in English) in Switzerland 24 and 25 October 2013

From Bellinzona to Luzern was a beautiful drive. We were driving towards the Swiss Alps. Because the area had heavy rain the previous day, there were many, many waterfalls and some of them were roaring down the mountain. We went through a multitude of tunnels of course, including the 17km Gotthard Tunnel. With these long tunnels, they have an FM station that you tune into and you can listen to the safety message as well as any news of accidents etc. It is a good service.

The weather remained sunny with a flutter of clouds here and there. We arrived in Luzern at about 4.00pm and found a camp site right on Lake Luzern (44.80 Swiss Francs CHF per night – there is I CHF to $1.15 AUD).

We visited Luzern in 2002 with my sister Sheryl. As soon as we saw the Lake, good memories flooded back. We saw the old Chapel Bridge which was built in the 14^th century. It had beautiful, colourful flowers hanging from it.

We got a lot of information about the city from the camp site and decided to ride our bikes into town. It was a very flat, 2 km ride. The sun was out and there were a lot of people simply walking along the shore of the Lake, enjoying themselves. We parked our bikes and then walked around the city, reminding ourselves of the fresco-painted buildings. They are very attractive, and sooo Swiss. We stopped to have a glass of red wine by the side of the Lake and then walked some more. We decided to have dinner back at the camper this night. It was dusk when we were riding our bikes back and there was crispness in the air. Very pleasant.

The next morning we were going to ride our bikes up to see one of the world’s most famous Lion Monument again. “The dying lion of Luzern” was hewn out of natural rock in memory of the heroic death of the Swiss mercenaries at the Tuileries in 1792. Mark Twain described the Lion of Luzern “the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world”. By the time we got going, making several phone calls it was 11.00am so we decided to drive the motor home to the monument.

Well…..we couldn’t find a park. The GPS took us through one street that we had about 3 cm spare each side!!! We circled around several times, seeing the Monument from above. They have put an awning over the whole road in front of the Lion Monument. After a couple of ‘goes’ at the parking thing, we thought “let’s go”. So we left Lucerne and headed for Bern the capital of Switzerland.

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