1982 - Home Leave to England - Lucerne Day #2

Wednesday August 4, 1982, Lucerne

The octopus alarm on the electronic game I bought in Zurich went off at six and woke me. I saw it was still a dull day, so I went back to sleep again for an hour or so. The breakfast was not as good as the du Theatre – no croissants or rye bread, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. As we did there, we had a bit of extra cheese with the rolls – a measure of the difference in prices between Zurich and Lucerne is that the cheese cost f1.50 here and f2.60 there.

Matt and Rab at the castle

It was raining and dull so obviously excursions across the like and up the mountain were out of the question so we spent an enjoyable morning shopping – Rab and Matt – and sightseeing – me. Actually we took so long to get the latter function going that in the end I threatened to leave them to their shopping and head off on my own. Our first expedition was up the old castle walls. Very interesting and a lovely view of the city from up there. 

 

City view from the castle

We then made our way back through the town (more shopping) and then up to the Lion Monument which is a very beautiful and moving memorial and then on to the Glacier Garden. I found this fascinating, but Rab’s feet were beginning to cave in and Matt was more interested in the Mirror Labyrinth and trying to Find The Mammoth (which wasn’t there) than trying to learn anything about glaciers.

 

The Lion Monument - Matt (bottom left) provides scale

It was raining pretty steadily at this stage, so we got a taxi back to our side of the lake. A PIC taxi actually which are all painted a ghastly shade of green. We went to the Alpina Hotel and had lunch there. Matt at last moved away from schnitzel and had a William Cheese i.e. pears and cheese on toast while I tried the chopped liver and rosti while Rab stuck to veal and rosti.

Matt and I left Rab to have a kip and caught a bus out to the Transport Museum. We had about one and a half hours there which was barely enough to look at the cars and skip through the air section. I found it all very interesting especially the section on old sleighs and coaches. There was also a minute ski-equipped aircraft which was apparently used for postal duties.

The weather had cleared a bit by the time we left so we decided to return across the lake rather than by bus. We found a time table and thought we’d be able to catch a ferry if we hurried, but it  didn’t turn up. Looking at the fahrplan again I realised that the service was dependant on fair weather and it seemed that the next scheduled trip was subject to the same conditions. So Matt and I ducked off smartish leaving all the other hopeful travellers at the end of the little jetty. It seemed a little cowardly but as there were several nationalities represented in the crowd and I wasn’t absolutely sure of my translation, I didn’t want to cause a diplomatic incident.

The wooden bridge

Matt and I caught a bus, getting off on the other side of the lake and walking over the old wooden bridge. I wanted to buy a Swiss hat there, which Rab had opposed, but when Matt said I looked like a madman in it, I had second thoughts. We picked up Rab and wandered through a couple of blocks we hadn’t explored previously. I was wearing my Zimbabwe T-shirt today and this was spotted by a man in a wheelchair who had left Zimbabwe last year to settle in Johannesburg. He had been to the paraplegic games at Stoke-Mandeville. Soon after we left him we stopped at a cheese shop to get a bit of a snack (you never know  when you will get hungry) and found that they were cooking little cheese tartlets. We immediately became esurient and had one each. Delicious.

That didn’t stop us having a little snack at a Movenpick. We chose that because Matt was yearning for something non-Swiss, like a burger, which he enjoyed. Rab tried the mushroom, cheese, ham on toast which I had yesterday for lunch and I settled for a tasty shrimp cocktail on toast. We find the prices here are pretty reasonable – lunch today was about $18.00 and would have been sufficient to keep us going with just a snack this evening. The hotels are also pretty reasonable. The Alpina quoted us f120 (about Z$44) for the three of us when we were considering an extra night here.

 

Matt and Rab having buried the hatchet share the fountain

We have had a good time here in Lucerne and enjoyed our stay – it really is a beautiful place and well worth a return visit some time. We have seen some  sights that got us smiling. Up at the Lion Memorial today there was a dear old American lady in her see through raincoat and either Matt or Rab made a cryptic crack about her being gift wrapped. Matt and I also saw a 2CV Citroen this afternoon which had a window box full of geraniums on its front bumper.