Aug. 14th - Our 1st Day Post-Jetlag in Lucerne

We had wonderful lie-flat seats on UA 3 from Chicago to Zurich, but Rita and I couldn’t get to sleep on the 9-hour flight. After watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael, I tried to get a few hours’ sleep, but gave up two hours before landing — enough time to watch Singing in the Rain (with Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds). Donald O’Connor’s dancing/gymnastics were the highlight for me.

Rita also watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 for the first time and Pretty Woman for at least the 10th time. (I’ve only watched it about 4 times with her.) She spent longer trying unsuccessfully to sleep than I did.

The train to Lucerne starts at the airport and ends at Lucerne, and it was crowded, especially after additional people got on in Zurich. And it was disappointing in terms of scenery. It was almost entirely industrial and cityscapes the entire trip, which took over an hour. This was not my expectation of train travel in Switzerland — and it was not a bullet train!

When we got to Lucerne, we had to drag our wheeled luggage about 1/2 mile, mostly over cobblestones, to our two hotels. Rita and I were booked into the Altstadt Hotel Magic Luzern, Lynn into The Lubo a couple blocks away. The picture I shared when I made the reservation at Altstadt Hotel Magic Luzern suggested a great view from our window, but in fact the window of our hot, non-air conditioned room was of an air shaft! It was in the 90s yesterday and today and will be 90 degrees tomorrow. Then we’ll be in the 70s and 80s for the next 7 days.

Although we got into our room immediately, Lynn had to wait until 3pm to get into her beautifully updated and air-conditioned room with courtyard view in The Lubo. It also had a nice king-size bed with daily housekeeping, but it cost half what our lousy room cost. It also had a table with two chairs (plus a kitchenette), whereas I’d have to work with my laptop on my lap, sitting on the side of our queen size bed.

Well, perhaps because we are paying Lynn’s expenses on this trip, she kindly volunteered to switch hotel rooms with us. Rita didn’t want to accept, but I was all for it, and after about 10 minutes sitting in air conditioned comfort discussing the matter, we carted Lynn’s luggage back to the Altstadt Hotel Magic Luzern, and Rita, who had unpacked completely, repacked us for the move to The Lubo — and we are loving it!

You’d think that we’ll sleep well Thursday night, but Lynn says she woke at 2 p.m. and never got back to sleep. We had trouble sleeping (because it was too cold for the first few hours and we didn’t have enough covers), but we raised the heat pump A/C to 75 and did finally sleep until our alarm went off at 6:30, and Lynn was already waiting for us when we went to the coffee house downstairs for a wonderful if expensive breakfast of scrambled eggs and avocado toast plus coffee.

Because of the 90-degree weather, we decided that today was the day to visit 7,000-ft. Mt. Pilatus. We caught a 9:15 boat to Alpnachstad, the town where the Pilatus cog railway begins its club to the summit. You couldn’t tell by looking at it, but the boat was an enclosed side paddle-wheeler built in 1901, as I discovered when I saw the open engine room in the middle of this boat and glanced through the window at one of the two paddle wheels in action:

With the angle of descent as high as 48 degrees, the cog railway is the steepest one in the world, getting us to the summit in 27 minutes. Here’s a picture from the railway’s website of one of the new cars introduced in 2023. Before then, they were the original wooden cars with velvet seats described in Rick Steves’ book.

Each train had 3 cars, and there were two trains climbing and descending at a time a couple or three minutes apart. I haven’t been on the Pikes Peak cog railway since it was refurbished, but it’s a piker compared to this one! This cog railway also goes through a half-dozen tunnels carved through sheer granite (I’m guessing). Here are a couple videos, one at the start and another going through a tunnel, and a third arriving at the top.

At the summit, the three of us initially walked through a 15-minute level loop that was almost entirely carved into the summit, with occasional peek holes to the outside. Here’s a picture I took of Lynn and Rita at one of those openings:

Further along, after Lynn and Rita had turned around, I encountered a Swiss man entertaining tourists by playing the famed alphorn.

Returning to one of the two hotels — yes, there are two hotels there — Rita ordered a not-so-tasty hamburger at the hotel’s terrace restaurant, while Lynn and I climbed to the summit, where I took this video, which zoomed in on her:

Before heading down, I shot a panorama video of the Swiss alps visible from there:

Here’s a neat video I took from that first summit of a paraglider who took off from the slope below the restaurant:

There was a second summit on the other side of the hotel (about that loop the three of us went on), and Lynn and I climbed it too after helping Rita finish that hamburger she didn’t like.

As recommended by Rick Steves, we took the cable car and the gondola (two segments) back toward Lucerne instead of returning on the cog railway. Here’s an external view of 30-passenger cable car leaving the summit. Halfway down we switched to 4-seat gondolas.

We were really blessed with minimal waits for all three transport segments. From the town (Kreins) at the bottom of the gondola, we took a tram back to Lucerne. It was a half-mile walk to the tram, but it was all pleasantly downhill.

We stopped at the coffee shop in our hotel before going up to our room and the three of us shared the most delicious noodle-with-salmon dish. Yum-yum! Then we went to our respective room for a two or three-hour nap/catching up (for me) before heading out to dinner at the restaurant inside the Hotel des Alpes near the famous Chapel Bridge. Here’s a picture I took of Rita, Lynn and our waiter showing not only the Chapel Bridge but also in the background the peak of Mt. Pilatus — a suitable picture encapsulating a wonderful day in Switzerland.

We went to the Hotel des Alpes for a reason: both Lynn and Rita had stayed in that hotel as teenagers when their grandparents, born near Lucerne, took them. Rita was 13 for her first trip and 17 for her second and remembered participating in a beer drinking contest during her stay. Those were different times! (Also, she looked older than 17, she claims.)

Tomorrow, more adventures in or near Lucerne.