We, Tracey and I, began our trip to Switzerland by riding into the country with Mark, our Art History and Italian Teacher. Mark lives in the town of Lugano, just over the Swiss border. When we crossed over into Switzerland... we asked but they refused to stamp our passports... sad face... so now I have no Italian or Swiss stamp in my passport... but I do have a stamp from Germany... ridiculous...
From Lugano we got on a train to Auf-Goldau... a connecting stop. On the train we sat in the dining car and ordered.. Hot Chocolate... and even on the train it was the good stuff, made from milk and chocolate powder.. .not that I'd expect anything less in Switzerland. The train ride was truly beautiful: little chalets, rivers and waterfalls... and MOUNTAINS. Our train got into the station about a twenty minutes late (apx. time of arrival 10:40 pm). The next connecting train left at 11:20pm. We called our hotel and were informed that we needed to make it to check in my midnight, or pay 2 franks for every minute we were late... ouch. We met a very nice Swiss woman on the train who lived in Lucerne, or Luzern (at this point in the story we've crossed for Italian Switzerland to German Switzerland... which means that all the cities now have German names... same place.. just two names). When she took us to the taxi cab stand another nearby woman heard us say the name of our hotel. She told us not to waste our money, that she would walk us to our hotel... being only a 5 minute walk from the train station. Is everyone in Switzerland so nice?... well, I didn't meet a mean or rude Swiss person my entire visit. On check in the guy at the hotel was so nice that he gave us a free upgrade on our room. He moved us from the budget hotel across the street to the main hotel where check in was. This hotel prided itself on being the only hotel in Luzern that had a swimming pool. ... funny, they even sold little swimsuits that said "Basletor Hotel" on the them.
The next day we milled around Luzern. We started checking off Items on our Swiss to do list:
See fresco building-check,
Walk over covered wooden bridges, yup they had two-check
Walk city wall and climb tower (scariest steppy tower ever, fairly certain that Tracey as a picture of me freaking out on the staircase)-check,
Visit Swiss cheese shop and purchase cheese-check,
Buy Swiss chocolate-check..double check... triple check (I can't help it if the chocolate is so good there-and Lindt gets it's own wall at grocery stores in Switzerland.. with all kinds of exclusive flavors),
Visit fake Alpine Diorama show... too funny-check
See large carved lion (Mark Twain called it the "most moving rock".. he has a funny sense of humor)
Buy jacket because its so cold-check, Fondue-check............
For dinner we were determined to do cheese fondue. We settled on a restaurant that was actually an anchored ship in the harbor. The woman in the tourism information station told us that they had very good fondue there. Her definition of inexpensive didn't exactly meet our definition as the fondue there was 32 franks per person (roughly 40 dollars apiece). But the view could be beat. The man actually apologized when he told us that the only table that he could seat us at was outside at the front of the ship. We had a full and uninterrupted view of the bay... a shame really.. heh. The cheese fondue when it came was actually a bit disappointing. Tracey and I both weren't very fond of it. The cheese was just too strong for our taste. To second the fondue we ordered Peasant's Alpine Macaronni: essentially the peasants are rich since it still cost 20 franks for the dish of fancy Mac and Cheese with potatoes and onions, but it was very yummy. We spent the rest of the night walking back around the entire city taking photos of everything at nice. It's just as breath taking at night as it was during the day. We probably clocked about 20 miles that day just walking back and forth across the city.
The next day we had strudel for breakfast(-check) and spent the day going up Mt. Pilatus- height 7,000 ft. We ascended the mountain on the world's steepest cogwheel train. It took about 30 minutes to make it to the top, and we saw some views that only the crazy mountain climbers could...and of course the hundreds of people riding the train each day, but it's nice to pretend. When we came to the top an ensemble of alpenhorn players were preforming. It was magical, I cried a little, there were literally clouds rolling in around us. We hiked around the trails at the top of the mountain, said "OH MY GOD THIS IS BEAUTIFUL fifty times, had more hot chocolate, and split the most delicious bratwurst ever(-check). When it was time to come home we rode Gondolas down the mountain, another 30 minute ride. For dinner we went to the Fondue house... where we had potato soup, paid 7 franks for tap water, and got Toblerone Fondue.... mmm chocolate fondue (-check).
The next day we had the most perfect food ever- a strawberry pieish thing with whip-cream and a piece of chocolate... that could not be perfected... we left no crumbs. After the perfect food we got on a train (got more hot chocolate and cheese in the dining car), met Mark back in Lugano. He showed us around his beautiful home... then we drove the 3 hours back to Capitignano. All in all a long... totally expensive.. and FANTASTIC weekend. It should be a moral imperative that everyone sees Switzerland in their life time.
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