Having just spent a day wandering through Zurich, I didn’t think I could find another city in Switzerland that would thrill me more! But honestly Lucerne is wonderful, especially the ‘Old town’.
On Saturday we had booked in for a bus tour which included a trip to Lucerne and also Mount Pilatus. The tour company picked us up from our hotel at 8.30 am. We met up with the rest of the other tourists, and by 9.30 we had left Zurich and were on our way to Lucerne. The views of Zurich as we climbed the hills were amazing, and the countryside was very typical of the Switzerland I had seen in movies and on television as I was growing up.
We arrive in Lucerne and the first place to visit was the Lion Monument. This sculpture was made in 1820-21, and was made in honour of the nearly 700 Swiss Guard who died while defending the King in 1792 during the French revolution. The dying lion is portrayed impaled by a spear, covering a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis of the French monarchy; beside him is another shield bearing the coat of arms of Switzerland. The inscription below the sculpture lists the names of the officers and gives the approximate numbers of soldiers who died.
From there we were all taken to the Lakeside and given and hour and a half to wander around and have a snack to eat. Lucerne has two wooden bridges that you can walk over that take you from the New Town over to the Old Town, although a lot of the New town is really old as well. The whole place is just a delight to walk around. I took hundreds of photos (well not quite, but nearly). Here is a sample for you to look at and to entice you to visit Lucerne yourself one day 🙂
I’ll start with photos of the buildings…
And now some photos of the bridges…
Other photos from and on the bridges…
Can you see why we loved Lucerne? A most picturesque town! We both felt like we were in a dream wandering through the place. The thing that brings you back to reality is the fact that hundreds of other tourists are there as well. As many tourists as the number of people that actually live there… almost daily! It’s still worth it, we loved our visit 🙂