Tuesday, May 10 Lucerne, Switzerland

Hello Faithful Followers,

Yes, it is true, we are home. We thought we would finish out our blog with our day getting to Lucerne and what we did while we were in Lucerne.  We appreciate your patience waiting for our next blog.

You may recall how your intrepid travelers got to Murren.  Murren, Switzerland is where we were when we started our day on Tuesday.  Basically, we had to do in reverse what we did to get to Murren.

We left Murren at 9:36 AM on this train car.

 We traveled to Grutschalp where we boarded this cable car.

 You can see from this picture we had descended to 4,875 feet.  The train station in Murren is at 5,361 feet.

 Looking up at the Grutschalp station as we were descending on the cable car.

Inside the cable car.  There were only 4 passengers including us.  The guy in the blue shirt looking down the mountain was the operator of the cable car.  We think he was more interested in the young woman seated in the corner.

Approaching the cable car station and the train station in Lautenbrunnen.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the train waiting to take us back to Interlaken.

Our luggage on the train from Lautenbrunnen to Interlaken.  When we left Lautenbrunnen we had the train car to ourselves.  By the time we got to Interlaken, the train was full.

We had about 30 minutes between trains in Interlaken.  This was nice as it gave us a chance to have morning refreshments in a local cafe.  This shows the train we took to Lucerne was scheduled to leave Interlaken at 11:04 AM and the intermediate stops.  At the bottom of the sign you can see the numbers 2,2,2,2, 1, 1/2.  That indicates where the train cars will be situated on the train for 2nd class and 1st class ticket holders.  The 1/2 means part of the car is sectioned off for 1st class and the rest of the car is 2nd class.  We bought all of our tickets for 2nd class.  There isn't a whole lot of difference between the two classes.

We went along the northern shores of Lake Brienz for the first part of our trip from Interlaken to Lucerne.  This is a glacially fed lake.  That is the reason for the color of the water.

 After Lake Brienz we went along other picturesque scenery and more lakes.

This is the Hotel Movenpick Monopol that we stayed at in Lucerne.  We arrived in Lucerne at 1:00 PM.  Our room is in the picture on the 5th floor to the far right at the corner.  There was a Starbucks, a McDonalds and a small food court on the ground floor facing the street.  The hotel faces a major intersection in Lucerne.

 We were happy that our room was ready 15 minutes after we arrived at the hotel.

This is the chapel bridge.  This is Lucerne's iconic tourist attraction.  It is a foot bridge that crosses Lake Lucerne.  It was about a two block walk from our hotel.

Looking across Lake Lucerne at our hotel.  Our hotel is in the center of the picture behind the boat.  The hotel is about one block from the lake.  We took the picture while seated on a park bench along a promenade along the side of the lake where Old Town Lucerne is located.

 We walked around Lucerne in the afternoon.  We found Andrea moonlights selling shoes in Lucerne.

We met this lovely family on our walk through Old Town Lucerne and decided we were blending in well with the locals.  We left Lucerne in the morning for Zurich knowing we had made meaningful relationships along the way.