We bid our quaint hotel in Austria a fond farewell, happy to have done all our washing and have clean clothes again! They fit much better in your case too, it must be all the dirt!
We travelled through beautiful rolling countryside and green hills with little villages nestled into the side of the mountains. Snow gllistened on the high peaks in the sunlight as the fog lifted. Once again the bus wandered its way through mountain roads weaving through the little villages and towns. Tunnels were another feature of the day as well.
On our arrival in Lucerne we went to visit the Lion sculpture. It is a memorial to the Swiss Guards and quite an impressive sculpture of a very sad and distressed looking lion with a spear through him. It commemorates a battle fought by the Swiss Guards during the reign of Louis XIVth at the Royal Palace (now the Louvre) in Paris. There was an uprising against the Royal family and unknown to the Swiss Guards the family had been moved to a safe place. The Guards continued to fight the good fight and 600 of them lost their lives. Even today in Switzerland all young men have to do twelve months service in the army and a refresher of one month per year. Employers accommodate this and the Swiss, even though they are neutral, have an army at the ready at any time.
The rest of the day we had free time to explore Lucerne. Of course if is a great place to buy a watch and we explored Bucherers, which is a famous watch store in the centre of town. You need a lot of money to shop there and they have a magnificent watch mechanism by the elevators, it's three levels high and operates with balls rolling through channels, kind of like a vertical pin ball machine that tells the time. Not having the kinds of dollars required for the first and second floor, we found the Swatch section on the third floor and Jordan bought a James Bond watch, which he is really proud of.
Lucerne city is located beside the river and there is a beautiful old wooden bridge you can walk across which is so picturesque with a turret half way along. It is not a straight bridge, it heads down river then bends at the turret to head across to the other side. So you can cross the river and end up a block down the town. Along the sides it has flower pots along the balustrades which cascades flowers along the side of the bridge. It's very pretty and very ancient.
We took the opportunity to buy warm weather gear at an outdoors shop as we will be going up a mountain tomorrow and the temperature will be between 0 and -5 with snow. We also checked out the souvenir shops and all the varieties of Swiss Army knives etc.
We wanted to experience Swiss cuisine so we asked at the Hotel for the location of a good local restaurant. We were sent to a little place just near the river and experienced a beautiful meal. We all ordered different delicacies and experienced Roshti ( a potato dish ) sausages, pork and steak cooked in true Swiss fashion with beautiful sauces that were very rich and creamy/cheesy. The restaurant was quite expensive, but as we could only fit in the main course it was quite reasonable, we staggered out feeling very replete and ready for bed.
