What a day we have had today. Our first full day in Lucerne was a cracker, definitely the best day of our holiday so far and I don’t think my blog writing skills are good enough to explain how amazing it was, but I’ll give it a crack anyway. It started off with us buying tickets for the Mt Pilatus Golden Circle Tour down at the reception desk in our hotel. We then went in and had our very expensive “free” continental breakfast (the Swiss love charging a fortune for rooms and including free breakfast, which for us given the amount we eat, is about 4 bucks). Breaky was pretty good and Kris smuggled a couple of ham rolls out for the kids to eat later (so make that 4.50, way to go Kris!). So we are eating breaky and it’s about 8:15 and we check out the various tour start times for Mt Pilatus and realise the first tour leaves at 8:45 down at the jetty about a km or so away. We umm and uhh about do we catch it or wait an hour for the next one and we decide, we’re going for it. So we scoff down our breaky, head up to our room and get ready as quick as we can and we double time it down to the boat and when I say double time it, I mean we ran like crazy. We get there with a few minutes to spare and jump on board. To explain the Golden Circle Tour it starts off with a 90 minute boat ride on Lake Lucerne to Alpnachstad where you get off and jump on the world’s steepest cog wheel railway. This is a 30 minute ride, sometimes at a 47% slope to the top of Mt Pilatus which is 7000ft up. Once there, you can wander around or take walks along tracks or walks inside tunnels where you can poke your head out of some hole in the side of the mountain. You can eat & drink at the restaurants, BBQ, whatever, heaps of stuff. Once you’re done with that, you board the cable car and start the descent down to Fräkmüntegg. You can get off here and you can take a ride on Switzerland’s longest toboggan run or do the rope climbing course, they have a kid’s playground, restaurant, whatever, heaps of stuff. After that you get on a gondola and descend further down to Krienseregg where you can get off and do......heaps of stuff and then you get back on the gondola and descend further down to Kreins where you catch the bus back to Lucerne. So, we are on the boat heading for Alpnachstad and it is a very foggy morning but you can tell that perfect weather is just waiting to burst through the fog. The boat ride is awesome with huge hills and mountains on both sides of the lake, it’s just stunning. We get to Alpnachstad and jump on the cogwheel railway. This thing goes up the side of the mountain and bloody hell it’s steep. The view within seconds is magnificent and it just keeps getting better every minute. We get to the top and the fog has lifted, the sun is shining and we are gobsmacked, the view is AMAZING, you just don’t know where to look first, well Kris does......the gift shop of course!!! After we have bought another kilo of stuff for the suitcase we head out along the walking trails and take some pics and just soak up the views for a while. We get some lunch at the restaurant before wandering around some more and taking some more pics and do some more walking trails and take some more pics. My camera is just about smoking up at this point so we decide to head down on the cable car to Fräkmüntegg and do the toboggan ride. We make sure we are right at the front of the cable car to get the best view and it’s a quick but amazing ride down. We head to the toboggan run and we team up with the kids, I share a toboggan with Mia and Kris is with Tyler. Mia is keen to put the hammer down so we fly down this thing and what a ride. We are waiting at the bottom for Kris and Tyler and we wait.....and wait......and wait. I’m starting to worry as it’s now getting dark, just kidding but Kristine is soooooo slow she’s holding up traffic!!!! They finally get down and we decide that we are doing that again. We get dragged back up to the top on our sleds by a wire cable and buy another ticket and swap teams. We let Kris and Mia go first and we don’t want to get held up so we give them a bit of time before we go. Kris and Mia start off and Mia must have control of the stick because they are flying. Time for Tyler and me to do a Swiss Olympic bob sled performance to catch them. We get to the bottom just behind Kris and Mia and we all agree that was loads of fun. After that we continue on down the mountain this time in a 4 person gondola. The ride down is pretty hairy. We get off at the next stop and check out the area before continuing on in another gondola. When we get to the bottom we make the short walk to the bus stop and catch the bus back to Lucerne. We get back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. We end up at this restaurant right by the water and end the day in another perfect location. We get stung half my superannuation for dinner but we don’t really care because it’s been one awesome day. Time to go home and get some sleep because tomorrow we do it all again but 3000ft higher up this time on Mt Titlis!!!
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| "On board the boat to Alpnachstad" |
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| "A view from the boat along the way" |
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| "A view from the cogwheel train" |
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| "A view from the top of Mt Pilatus with a cogwheel train heading back down" |
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| "A view from the top of Mt Pilatus looking over Lake Lucerne" |
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| "At the top of Mt Pilatus" |
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| "Kris and I took the cogwheel train up the mountain, Mia decided to climb!" |
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| "So Tyler followed" |
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| "A church perched on top of Mt Pilatus....just!" |
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| "A view on the way down from Mt Pilatus from the cable car" |
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| "A view across the toboggan run with a cable car coming down from Mt Pilatus" |
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| "Tyler and me at dinner" |
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| "Kris and Mia at dinner" |
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| "Our view across Lucerne at dinner" |
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