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Bella Vita-Das gute Leben Part 11 #155530
02/23/2018 01:13 PM
02/23/2018 01:13 PM
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 3,493
VIRGINIA
B
BEERMAN Offline OP
Traveler
BEERMAN  Offline OP
Traveler
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Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 3,493
VIRGINIA
"I care not where my body may take me as long as my soul is embarked on a meaningful journey" Dante Alighieri.

Unfortunately our journey through Italy was cut short by a day because of a scheduled transportation strike. On the positive side, we will see our daughter a day earlier than expected...which is nice! We checked the train schedules and found plenty of options going to Milan where we would then transfer to a train to Lugano Switzerland. The quiet early morning walk to the train station had us yearning to return to beautiful Italy.


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After an uneventful train trip our daughter joined us for a nice pasta lunch in Lugano. She had one last work commitment to tend to then off to Zurich for the 3 of us. Sydney has become quite the seasoned traveler and took care of our accommodations at the Hotel Allegra close to the Zurich airport. She would be flying out at 0700, so morning would come early! We dropped our bags in the clean modern room and jumped a train to Old Town Zurich to see what we could see.


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Basically all we had time for was a relaxing walk along the lovely Limmat River. Old Town is a beautiful historic district with lots of houses dating back to the middle ages and many prominent steeples and clock towers such as the Grossmunster Cathedral. Apparently Charlemagne aka "Father of Europe" is given credit for having a church built here and the folklore of how he discovered the site is interesting...long story short he was hunting a massive deer that lead him across Europe where it collapsed on the graves of 2 Zurich patron Saints. The kicker is that these 2 saints did not wish to worship Roman gods, thus beheaded, then their headless bodies rose placing their heads under their arms and walked to the site of Grossmunster to be buried! Could have happened?! Charlemagne was around 800 BC, I think the current cathedral replaced the original in the 11th century.

After sunset we enjoyed a great German dinner next to Gossmunster on a narrow side street. Our waiter at De'zaley did not speak a lick of English, nor I German, but Sydney helped us decide on what to order, variety of stroganoff and sausages, nice! She studied French not Swiss German, did she just wing it?!! The walk back to the train was nice with the Old Town illuminated in lights. We were exhausted and apparently so were the swans, had never seen a swan sleeping before! Our beds were so comfortable and perfectly configured for our family of three, great choice Sydney!


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Morning absolutely came quicker than we liked, actually set an alarm for 0415 hours so our daughter could catch the first airport shuttle at 0500. Once we knew she would make her 0700 flight to Copenhagen we grabbed breakfast and gathered our gear. Time to backtrack on the rails a little, one hour to Lucerne or Luzern if you prefer.


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We planned our stay in Lucerne while traveling from Italy. Donna found a great hotel right in the center of things on the Reuss River. Funny thing, during our train ride she received an email from the third party reservation group asking why we hadn't checked in? When we entered the main door of Hotel Pickwick we literally walked up to the bar, Mr. Pickwick's Pub, cool! We told the bartender we were checking in, she had us walk around the bar to the small check in window! She checked for our reservation and said...uh, we expected you yesterday? uh oh! The manager came over and said oh you're the ones that didn't show, uh oh! They got busy figuring things out and finally said we do have one room left, shew! After check in the manager gave us a tour, showed us an alley doorway to use if we didn't want to walk through the bar. What a wonderful hotel, large clean room with a balcony and view to die for!


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By the way, the third party reservation snafu was probably our fault with the dates? we have only used 3rd party a couple times and we found that the prices were cheaper going directly through the hotels, just saying.

Once we dropped our backpacks off we asked the bartender if she had only one day in Lucerne what would she do, the 9 Towers Walk was one of them, sounds good! We found ourselves walking in yet another beautiful town knee deep in history of course. We crossed one of or maybe the oldest covered wooden bridges in all of Europe, the Kapellbrucke "Chapel Bridge". Up in the rafters of the covered bridge are triangular 17th century paintings depicting Swiss history, very cool. There was a fire on this bridge in 1993, caused perhaps from a discarded cigarette, that destroyed the majority of the 17th century paintings. 2/3 of the paintings were destroyed, about 40 or so remain, uggh! There's an old stone water tower connected to the bridge that pre dates the bridge itself. It was once used as a dungeon and torture chamber eeek!


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We wandered around the town and eventually crossed back over the rushing Reuss River using another covered bridge the Spreuer. This bridge contained another 67 paintings depicting "The Death Dance"...lots of skeletons and the Grim Reaper, eeek! Once over the bridge we found a set of stairs leading to the 9 Towers walk, the initial climb was a doozie! One step at a time I followed Donna who reached the base of the first tower a week before me. The tall towers are spread out along the high ridge connected by the long Musegg Wall circa 1386. The views were incredible, we had a great birds eye view of the entire city and all the way to Mt Pilatus which sits at 7000 feet, very cool! At one point, when walking a section of the long wall, the overcast skies dumped on us! luckily we had our raincoats! We ducked into the dry confines of the next tower and found the oldest city clock circa 1535, cool. This clock is allowed to chime on the hour one minute before any other in Lucerne! When we exited the tower the rain had thankfully stopped and the skies opened up in a good way, everywhere was cloud covered, but an opening in the clouds developed over Mt Pilatus and sent down the most awesome sunbeams, very very cool!


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At the base of the ninth tower we began our descent back towards the hotel. The city has many great shops and Donna took advantage of them, I opted for a pint at Mr. Pickwicks Pub! Once we reunited we headed out for our last evening stroll in Europe. We experienced many beautiful places at night on this trip and this one was just as beautiful and magical as the rest.

If you've stayed with me through all of the reports, from hiking around the Matterhorn in Zermatt to turning our teeth purple in Tuscany and stretching our legs everywhere in between, I thank you for reading!

Oh, how did we close out our last evening? back at Mr. Pickwicks, eating great bar food, drinking frothy pints and listening to a German band play Reggae in an English pub on a river in Switzerland....Perfect!


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To be continued....somewhere! Ciao..Auf Wiedersehen!

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Re: Bella Vita-Das gute Leben Part 11 [Re: BEERMAN] #155581
02/24/2018 01:24 PM
02/24/2018 01:24 PM
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 594
Michigan
I
IWIWSE Offline
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IWIWSE  Offline
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Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 594
Michigan
As always. Thanks for taking us along.

Re: Bella Vita-Das gute Leben Part 11 [Re: IWIWSE] #155597
02/24/2018 06:07 PM
02/24/2018 06:07 PM
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 3,493
VIRGINIA
B
BEERMAN Offline OP
Traveler
BEERMAN  Offline OP
Traveler
B
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 3,493
VIRGINIA
And thank you for always reading!! If you or others found the reports after Photobucket ended 3rd party sharing, sorry the pics disappeared in parts 1 and 2. I'll probably rework them so the pics appear using Eric's new system. Cheers!


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