Skip to main content

Lucerne

Our day in Lucerne is a busy one. As usual! I took an insane amount of pictures in Switzerland due to it’s beautiful nature so I’m going to use small pics and then you can click on them. Or not. I don’t care either way because I saw it in person. Booya! Ok we started by heading up Mt.Pilatus. It’s the tallest mountain in the area - we had to take a 20 minute gondola ride up to the peak.

IMG_0415IMG_0445

Once we got up to the top I ran to the nearest coffee shop because the hotel coffee was awful. You guys must think I’m crazy with the amount of coffee I consume but they are really jamming our days up and I’ve been under the weather. So…

IMG_0438

After (and partly due to) the double espresso, I went on a picture taking rampage. What follows can only be described as breathtaking. Both for its beauty and the insane amount of stairs I had to climb with very little oxygen in the air.

IMG_0421IMG_0420

IMG_0424IMG_0417

IMG_0450IMG_0451

IMG_0447IMG_0454

Cute wedding chapel on the mountain. You have to walk there. HA!

IMG_0465IMG_0464

We eventually descended Mt. Pilatus and had some free time in the city of Lucerne. I ate some lunch at a place where the prices were so high I don’t even want to talk about it (Switzerland is rich) and then we rented paddle boats for a bit.

IMG_0475IMG_0487

IMG_0474

After a nice pedal around the lake with some impromptu swimming, we met over on the docks for a more official boat cruise. My camera died shortly after I got on the boat but here a few I managed to squeeze in:

IMG_0506

IMG_0505IMG_0500

After the boat cruise I went back to the hotel to shower and get changed for dinner. It’s a traditional Swiss Cultural Experience which (lucky for everyone) is very different than the Dutch one. The dinner featured fondue and a show. The fondue featured an incredible amount of alcohol (who knew?) and the show featured an incredible amount of accordion. We were also a little off to the side so we didn’t have the best views of the stage but they put it through their TVs also.

IMG_0520

The room was ridiculously hot but also hilarious so I had a good time. However, like the Dutch Cultural Experience, I would not do this again. Here are some pictures although I couldn’t get any good ones of the guy playing the broom or the two-person cow that licked people in the audience. Yeah I have no idea.

IMG_0540IMG_0545

And that concludes Day 5!

Tomorrow is extreme sports day in Austria with a brief stop in Lichtenstein to get some snacks and laugh at them. You have a puny country and no army! HA HA!

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 14, 2011 at 7:57 AM

    Nothing else comes to mind except BEAUTIFUL!!

    Barb & Gary

    ReplyDelete
  2. AdamJuly 14, 2011 at 1:34 PM

    Totally amazing, good photography work!

    Did someone say ski vacation?!?!? I'm in!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dick MostlyJuly 14, 2011 at 2:09 PM

    One thing is for sure: you are definitely in Europe. Amazing stuff man. All caught up (forgot your blog address).

    P.S. Nice bokeh in the Espresso picture, you're a natural.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rhine Valley to Lucerne

Today was mostly a driving day. It was around three hours on the bus in the morning with an hour stop in the afternoon before leaving Germany. I believe it was somewhere in the black forest region but I didn’t get the name of the town because I was sleeping. We took some pics with a cool waterfall and I ate some kind of bratensteinwurst and then we  drove the last few hours to Lucerne. Waterfall action: Ashlee always asks to get in my pictures and then she stands there like I have a gun to her back. She’s so weird. Then we get to Lucerne in the late afternoon and stop at another of Contiki’s partners: Harry’s Swiss Watch Center. They sell Swiss army knives, watches and chocolate at excellent prices. I didn’t take any pictures of this shop because it was boring. Then I went outside to get Swiss Franks out of the ATM since we will be here for a few days and they don’t do the Euro thing. Because they’re independent. Or shady. This was taken near the ATM machine. The girls ask me to
10 comments
Read more

Venice

ITALY HERE WE COME! You will not be surprised to hear that today was another crazy day in the land of Contiki. We left our Austria hotel at 8am and checked into our Venice hotel at 10pm. Here is what we did in between: First stop in Italy was a service station. They had real Italian pizza and paninis as well as free bathrooms for when you’re done with your Italian pizza and paninis. I was so excited about the thin crust, light sauce and italian salami that I had to take a picture. Delicious! Now off to Venice. Venice is an island and there are no vehicles allowed so we had two options to get there: a 2.5 hour walk from some place that I can’t remember or a 20 minute ferry ride across some body of water that I can’t remember. We chose the ferry. On the ferry I took some pictures of buildings that I can’t remember. Here they are: The port we docked at is right next to Saint Marc’s square. This is the most popular place for people to start their visit in Venice so it was pretty packe
10 comments
Read more

Nice to Chateau

Well we have to leave Nice today. And it’s supposed to be sunny and fantastic. Oh well. Adil had the great idea to go down and see the sunrise before we left since yesterday was kind of a bust. Sunrise was around 6am which isn’t that bad – it’s like a work day – but I was up until 2am so I was pretty tired. I thought about just staying in bed but I would have regretted it and I had plenty of time to sleep on the bus so I rallied and went downstairs. We got there probably 20 minutes early and discovered that our lookout point was actually a homeless person’s bedroom. She was just waking up though so she invited us in for some tea and biscuits. It was nice. As the sunrise got closer, we realized that there was a flaw in our plan: Nice is in a bit of a cove (as is evident in my pictures yesterday) and the sun’s path was not something we considered. I just assumed it was more southerly (sure why not) and over the water. Here I point out Nice on the map. There is no way the sun would make
7 comments
Read more