Rodney loves the mountains, but I need a beach to make me truly happy, and I do understand that there will never be beaches with rolling surf anywhere up a mountain. But you can love a classic movie like The English Patient even if there isn’t a gorgeous actor like Jude Law in it, and sometimes standing on a mountain with, what feels like the world beneath your feet, I do get it, and so then I can let the rolling surf wait for another time.
When we arrived in Switzerland, we crossed the Rhine River, twice I think, in Basel. Eileen tootled along, up and down green hills dotted with small farms. It was all there, creamy brown cows, little churches with interesting steeples, meadows full of flowers, blue lakes, snow-capped mountains and all under a clear blue sky. South, south, south; we need to warm up and surprisingly when we got out of the car, just north of Luzern, it was so very much warmer. By mid- afternoon it was 19°C and oh, the joy of no longer needing to be wearing the ‘Michelin Man’ style. Now it felt like Spring and we couldn’t have timed the weather better to arrive in Luzern.
Luzern itself is beautiful; a perfect picture-postcard and we instantly decided to stay a couple of days to really breath it in. We left Eileen at Camping International Lido and cycled the 2.5kms back round the lake to the city centre and then spent four hours strolling the strassen, wandering over the fantastic wooden bridges and the old city walls. It felt like one of the most peaceful, laid back cities that we have come across on our travels.
Now we knew that Switzerland was going to be expensive and one of the first things we needed to do, was to get some Swiss francs from a bank teller machine. We were both a bit shocked when the 400Fr came out of the machine as two 200Fr notes! Each note was equivalent to $266Au or £145……..how much was a cup of coffee going to cost?!!!!! Actually we did check that out on the menu board at Starbucks: about 7Fr for the medium size, that’s $9Au…..eeks! Rodney, get those big notes ready, I’m off to the Swiss chocolate shop to check out what I fancy.
Thursday was another beautiful sunny day, so we cycled round to the ferry terminal and floated across the superb Lake Lucerne (aka Vierwaldstättersee). At Vitznau we hopped off and then boarded the cog railway which plodded up to Rigi-Kulm, the top of the mountain. It has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world; the majestic mountains spread before us, all still topped with plenty of snow and the lake still in view below us. We breathed it all in deeply, to treasure as a memory for ever.
Before heading back down on the train, we drank hot chocolate and ate a pretzel and a slice of apfel strudel…..when in Switzerland…….
No, we bought return tickets and wanted value for our Swiss francs !!!!
Glad you said it because Laura didn’t believe we did that…..
Did you run back down Rodney, like we did 58, or was it 57 years ago!