Switzerland

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Our final adventure in Europe. Our plans of heading to Spain had gone out the window, along with a stack of Euro's. So we were heading to Asia early to ease our bank accounts, but not before a short stop in Switzerland and another few days in Munich.

We took the train to Zürich from Munich with no problems at all. So far so good. Upon arrival I somehow miscalculated how long we had till we needed to board the train to Lucerne. Stupidly we took our time, had a million dollar coffee, paid $5 to use a toilet, had a wander, you know killing time. My brain suddenly remembered to 'carry the 1' and i realised we had missed our train. Not to worry though, trains head to Lucerne every hour or so. So we were soon in Lucerne and it was a lot bigger than I imagined. Not to say it was big, it was still small, but not the quaint little alpine town i had imagined. My brain was definitely not switched on that day because my map reading skills proved poor and it took us an hour to find our hotel.

After an argument with the hotel staff about what a 'double' room means we eventually gave up and stayed in the twin. We decided to take it up a notch for Kell's birthday and stay in a somewhat decent place but that doesn't always mean it's run better than a hostel.

It was starting to get late so we had a three million dollar pizza and went and sat by the lake and watched the swans play.

The next day we headed out to one of the mountains. We caught a ferry from Lucerne to the other side of the lake and caught a cog railway up Mount Pilatus. An hour was spent walking around a few tracks in the cold, i think it was about 4 degrees. Then we had lunch at the only restaurant available. We could afford a slice of cake and a packet of chips. On the way back we took another route. A cable car went down the back of the mountain to a small town on the outskirts of Lucerne. Then we took a bus back into town. By this stage we realised we weren't going to make it back to Munich that night, as planned. So we went in search of the one and only hostel in town. We were now a 15 minute walk out of town. But opposite a nice park next to the lake, so it wasn't all bad.

The next day we decided to can Lucerne and see some of Zürich instead. It was Kell's birthday and we celebrated it by eating at a restaurant. Yeah a real one. It took us the best part of two hours to find but we eventually settled on a fantastic Italian Restaurant. A bit of pasta and a few beers later we were back on another exciting train journey (note: sarcasm). Kell's birthday was spent mostly on trains which you can imagine thrilled her. It was all going fine though till the train took an unexpected stop. We stopped for over an hour. From what we could gather (not speaking the language and all), a tree had fallen on the track up ahead and we had to wait for it to be cleared.

Once we made it back to Eching it was more festive and Kell received her presents and we all had another wonderful meal. So with the family around it felt like a birthday after all.



Note: Luckily we had these photos on Facebook already.

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