The consensus of everyone we’ve chatted with, as well as the internet, is that Lucerne is beautiful and has one of the prettiest lakes in the world (Lake Lucerne; let’s pause and hand it to the Swiss that, in our sample of 2, they have nailed it when aiding travelers in remembering, “What is the name of the big lake next to ?” Lake Lucerne is the big lake next to Lucerne, and Lake Zurich is the big lake next to Zurich).
We took a tram and train to get to Lucerne in a bit over an hour this morning and started out by walking through Kapellbrücke (the “Chapel Bridge”), which is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe, having been originally built in 1365 (its been modified and shortened over the years as the riverbanks have expanded, but is still over 200 meters long). It was extensively damaged by a fire in the mid-1990s, but was fully restored after that. And, it has triangular paintings up in the trusses throughout most of its span. Pretty interesting (and, as Tim was taking some pictures of the outside, Slowson and the Luce clowned around and popped their heads out…and made for the best picture he took of the bridge!).
There is a “golden round trip” approach to seeing the sights around Lucerne, which involves travel by boat, by cogwheel rail, and by cable car to various sights, but we decided (kinda’ a 2/3 majority vote; the minority vote was a bit grumpy about the result, but ultimately accepted the results) to forego that, as it seemed like we could find ourselves short on time (and risk motion sickness on the boat ride for one member of our party), as Tim had a dinner commitment at 6:30 back in Zurich. So, instead, we opted to walk to the cable car station at the base of Mount Pilatus, which would give us the opportunity to see some of the town on foot. As it turned out…there wasn’t much to see once we left the core of the city, but getting away from the (tourist) path most taken still holds a special little bit of charm, in one documenter’s opinion.
The cable car up Mount Pilatus was pretty neat. The first cable car is small (each car seats 4 comfortably) and has an intermediate stop along the way: riders can get out and check out the playground, the view, and the restaurant (we did not get out, and we realized on our way down that, due to the linear nature of cable cars, people who were waiting to get back on the cable car—going up or down—at that stop could easily be in for a long wait). The final stop for that cable car is still not the top of the mountain, but also has a cafeteria-style restaurant (where we ate lunch), a ropes course (if we had more time and Lucy had not worn a skirt…there’s a good chance that would have been tackled), and some great views. The final (cabled) leg up the mountain is a much larger cable car that can hold 40-50 people (standing). It’s a steeper ascent and offers spectacular views (from a sardine-packed viewpoint), including going over a “ridge” where the land completely drops away beneath the cable car (Benton’s knuckles were noted to have changed to a slightly whiter shade of pink).
The top of the mountain has a large observation area, as well as several short, but steep, trails up to both the peak and some secondary peaks. And the views were, indeed, spectacular!
After hanging out at the top of the mountain for a bit, the journey was reversed: two cable cars back down to the bottom, a walk (with a stop for bubble tea along the way) to a tram back into the rail station, then a train back to Zurich, and then another tram back to apartment.
Tim showered and headed back out pretty quickly to meet up for dinner with another locally-based analytics friend (Maciek Stanasiuk: a native Pole who has lived in Zurich for the past five years; a fun aside is that, in past roles, Maciek has been a co-worker of Tim’s podcast co-host, Moe Kiss, as well as Tim’s current manager, Julie Marks). They met for dinner at Haus Hitl, which is the oldest continuously operating vegetarian restaurant in Europe, having opened its doors in 1898!
Slowson and the Luce headed out for dinner separately and had a Japanese meal where, somehow, Slowson discovered espresso. Afterwards, they walked around the area and found both a pretty interesting observation tower, as well as a playground that was very deliberately constructed to look like it was banged up and in some degree of disarray.
In stateside news, Julie got and accepted a position with Rackspace, and her first day on the job will be Tim’s first day back in the office from this summer excursion. There will be back-to-school style pics.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: After dinner, in search of a pastry dessert (the place was closed), we came across a whole row of hookah bars (“shisha bars”) in one stop (including one that had a father with several of his kids in a booth)
Tim: Benton’s retrieval of the laundry card from an upstairs neighbor that he had inadvertently left in the laundry room—she was an older lady who did not speak a word of German, so it was a pretty extended exchange, but he stuck with it and was successful!
