Our last full day in Switzerland!
We left our hotel in Lucerne, and checked our bags into the lockers in the station as usual. Our plan for the day was to go up Mt. Pilatus, the prime attraction near Lucerne. We first took a 20 min train to Alpnachstad (covered by Swiss pass) which dropped us at the base of Mt. Pilatus. From here, we had to buy tickets (half price with pass) to take the cog wheel train up the mountain.
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| Base of the mountain |
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| Cog wheel train up Mt. Pilatus |
After reaching the station at the top of the mountain, there were a couple of different hikes and walks we could do. We chose to do 3 hikes: 2 ten minute ones, and one that was 1.5 hours. The first 10 min hike was going into a rock tunnel, with windows into the surrounding valleys.
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| View from a window in the rock tunnel on Mt. Pilatus |
The second 10 min walk was actually a series of steps that took up to a 360 degree viewpoint, from which you could see the surrounding lakes (apparently, there are 6).
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| From viewpoint |
The third, longer, hike was around the top of the mountain, and took us to the highest point of Mt. Pilatus. Most of the walk was pretty flat, and had nice views, and the last 15 mins was a steep climb to the summit.
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| Summit of Mt. Pilatus |
When we had taken the train up the mountain, we were asked to pick the time of the return trip, because they stagger how many people can go down in the trains. During our last hike we realized we were dangerously close to missing our train, and speed walked our way back. Thankfully, we made it to the station back in time, and took the cog wheel rail back down.
We spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch and walking around Lucerne. We saw the famous chapel bridge, which is iconic to Lucerne.
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| Chapel bridge in Lucerne |
We also took a bus and saw the Lion monument, another famous landmark in Lucerne.
It was around 5pm at this time, and we had made reservations to stay at Zurich for this night, because we had to catch an early morning flight out of Zurich the next morning. So, we sadly left Lucerne for Zurich in an intercity train. Zurich seemed to have nothing special to see, so we went up to a park that faces the city’s river, and watched the sunset from there.
This ended our short but lovely visit to Switzerland!
This was also when I discovered that I was pregnant…little did we know how this was going to change our traveling lifestyle!
