Snow in Summer!?!?

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We arrived in Lucerne on the 3rd of July to much colder weather. Our hotel was 7000ft off the ground up mount Pilatus and so we had to catch cable cars (a little like chair lifts) up to the top which took approximately 30 minutes to reach the hotel. AS you can imagine being so high up the mountain, it was just freezing - we felt like we were in the middle of the snowfields! In saying that, can you imagine our surprise and shock when it did actually snow and at times quite heavily on the 4th and 5th of July… so much for summer in Switzerland!!! A lot of people were so excited, including Steve - who had never seen snow before. We must say, we were not expecting these low temperatures here and would have prepared ourselves with more winter woollies!!!

The bad weather threw our plans off on the 4th of July. We were unable to get the cable cars down the mountain as they had been shut down. Instead we had to use the cog railway to get down the mountain, a speedy train that went no more than 9km/h… yep it did take a while!!! Because of this, our plans for the day were delayed.

We decided for our free day in Lucerne that we would go to the Fondu and Swiss Show Lunch which was an optional extra excursion. Of the 50 people on our tour, only 9 of us attended this lunch. We both loved the show and are glad we chose to go. The show featured the musical instruments of a cello, accordion, piano, flute and clarinet. The performers blew the horns, played the cow bells and something different…. Danced with the broom and broom handle! We also saw flag throwing, national dress and yodelling - all the traditional Swiss performances. Crowd participation was part of the show and surprise, surprise, Steve was elected to get up and yodel. Of course Kim thought it was just hysterical!!! Steve handled it all quite well though and he actually sounded ok… but we’ll let some of you be the judge… yes, our mate of tour filmed the whole thing on his mobile and Kim made sure she got it copied on her phone to share with all back home 

In the afternoon after the show we managed to fit in shopping before meeting up with the rest of the group for a river cruise back to the bottom of Mount Pilatus. The cruise was ok, but the weather (fog and rain) meant that the scenery did not look as good for photos.

We left Lucerne early on the 5th of July. We really liked Lucerne and thought the scenery was just magnificent! However, like everyone else on tour, we did find the place to be a little pricey. This didn’t mean much to us though because we were only here for a short time.

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