We decided that we would take the train to Lucerne for the day. It was a 3-hour train ride, but just being on the train was amazing. We got to see the absolutely beautiful countryside. The lakes are an incredible teal blue. The mountains and hills...just so gorgeous.
Our plan was that we would go up Mount Pilatus on the cogwheel. We had read that our Swiss Travel Pass would cover the expense, and we were all about getting our monies worth from that pass. Have I mentioned how expensive Switzerland is?!
We were worried that we didn't have directions to find the cogwheel, but fortunately, our train dumped us out right in front. That was a relief.
When we got to the ticket window, the lady told us that the Swiss Travel Pass only got us 50% off. We still would have had to pay 70 SF (approx. $70) to go up. Unfortunately, that was brand new news, so Rick Steves didn't have that update on his website {side note: if you have one of his travel books, you can look up the latest updates on his website which proves to also be super helpful!}.
I wasn't sure that there was much to do up there, other than to take in the views. There's a place you can stop and pay extra to ride a toboggan, but we weren't sure there was anything else. I had heard that the views on the way down in the cable car were beautiful, but we had just splurged on Jungfraujoch and decided not to go up Mt. Pilatus. The cogwheel is the steepest in the world, so that would have been fun, but I don't feel like we missed out on anything.
Instead, we decided to head into Lucerne and look around the town. I knew there was the Chapel Bridge to see, but we didn't think we needed to see much else. {Again, we are mountain people...we liked being in nature versus the city.}
We decided to take another train over to Fortress Fürigen. On Sundays, things are a bit slower in Switzerland. There aren't as many things open and they don't run the trains as frequently. We found a grocery store inside the train station and grabbed some lunch while we waited for the train. Are you finding a theme about our meals here?? haha!
The train took us to the stop that we needed...thank you, Rick Steves, for guiding us there. Then we had to walk. It was about a 25-minute walk, and I kept wondering if we were even going the right way. We'd see a sign occasionally and then were reaffirmed that indeed, we were walking the right way. We did get a good workout in because it was a rather warm day.
The fort was really cool, literally. I knew that Tyler would like it because it had something to do with guns. It was built in the side of a mountain to keep Switzerland safe during the wars. It had an audio tour as well, which was informative.
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| One of the cannons. You could look through it to see where it was aimed. |
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| The fresh air tunnel. |
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| A hallway |
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| There were over 100 men in the fort with only 50 beds. They had to share. |
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| The washroom. |
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| The lake outside of the Fort. |
We walked around for maybe a half hour. We took some pictures and decided that we were ready to head back up toward our hotel. We weren't sure what time the train was leaving, but we were hoping that we wouldn't have to wait a long time. Lucky for us, the train headed towards Interlaken was 13 minutes delayed! We couldn't believe it. We hopped right on for the train ride back. We weren't sure what we were going to eat for supper since we got to the train station right at supper time. But we decided that we would wait until we got back to our hotel and we'd order some pizzas from the hotel bar. It was a 2-hour ride back, but there was much to see still.
Overall, this day was fun. We got to see much of the Berner Oberland, but we also proved to ourselves that we really just love being in the mountains.
Other Posts in this Series:
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