Blogs from Lucerne, North-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 2

Sunday, 1st July, 2012 – Lucerne, Switzerland There has been so much to see and do we keep forgetting to write bits and pieces. For those who have been following the blog, you may remember that in Lake Como we met an Italian chef, Vivian. She introduced us to her friend, Momi, who runs a fab restaurant right on the lake. After taking an incredibly scenic taxi ride down the steep escarpment on Lake Como (the taxi driver literally had to do 3 point turns at every corner!), we were met by the very charismatic Momi who led us to the most lakeside table and served his recommended specialties. What a way to do lunch! Lake Como, we want to live with you! A definite highlight to the trip has been the journey from Italy ... read more

The weather still seemed against us as we headed north towards Luzern. The plan was to head for a municipal camping site just outside Luzern with a good train and bus service from the town. Switzerland is a fairly small country 200 miles across at the point we were travelling but it seemed to take an age travelling along the roads and through the many tunnels which peppered our route. The St Gottard being the longest. Similar to the Mersey Tunnel but so much longer. Pretty churches and waterfalls peppered the route. When we arrived at the campsite it was closed for lunch. Lunch turned up to be between about 12.30 and 3 pm. Already caravanners were waiting at the gates to be registered to stay for the night and we were herded into a holding ... read more

Its been a week since we left Sydney and so far we have had a great time. The first stop was Jakarta, we only had one day so we visited a large shopping emporium about 25 minutes by taxi from the hotel. We were also able to enjoy some nice indonesian food. The next real stop was London after transit stops in Dubai and Amsterdam. In London we did a tour of the city highlights, had a very nice lunch at Harrods and we were able to catch up with Charlie at Westminster Abbey. The European Cavalcade began on Wednesday. The first stop was Amsterdam after travelling through France and Belgium. Once in Amsterdam we headed straight to the red light district for some x-rated sightseeing and then enjoyed the canal cruise finishing the night off ... read more

After breakfast at the Trenitalia station in Milano Centrale, we boarded our train to Switzerland. We were headed for Luzern via Arth Goldau, where we had to alight from the very fast train and board another train to Luzern Bahnhof in the German-speaking north-central Switzerland. Train travel is wonderful - it's fast, quiet, clean and when travelling through Schweiz, is a wonderful scenic experience. What we saw through our train windows looked like Costiera Amalfitana, Lago di Garda and Venice put together!! There were maginficent snow capped mountains and cliffs - with buildings built throughout and beautiful alpine lakes. On arriving in Luzern, we rolled past Lake Luzern - "Vierwaldstättersee" - the fourth largest lake in Switzerland. Our first stop was for some traditional Swiss refreshments - Starbucks. Wifi and a coffee was required. AUD$38 later ... read more

Today was AMAZING!! My pics and description of the day just will not be able to do it justice! We started off the day catching the train to Lucerne (Luzern) and the weather was not good! Really heavy thick grey cloud covering the whole sky but we remained hopeful that it would clear up! The train took only an hour and we stepped out into Lucerne! So beautiful! Old like Berne with fountains everywhere but a huge lake surrounding us! The weather started improving and we wandered round Lucerne for a while, tried the amazing swiss maronni, fed the gianormous swans, walked the famous bridge that was burnt in 1992 so some of the paintings were ruined but its still pretty special, and sat in at the stage - the sun! and ate lunch! We then ... read more