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This morning I rose bright and early (6am) in preparation of my day trip to Lucerne (or Luzern in Swiss), a lakeside town 1 hour from Bern. I walked to the train station, munching on some baguette from yesterday, and purchased my train ticket (35 Francs one way! AHHHH!!!).
When I arrived, it was very quiet and peaceful, not many people to be seen. Rearing up behind the village are these enormous maintain ranges, and this early in the morning the peaks were masked with a light mist. My first destination was a wander around the medieval quarter, which, like Bern, feels like you´ve stepped into a time machine. Lucerne has even more ornate frescoes on its buildings, which you can see in my photos. I then heading up to the Musegg Wall, which was built in 1386 and has these cool towers you can climb to get a good view. The first once I came across was the tallest of the three available for climbing. The steps you use to climb up are so steep, and look incredibly old, like they may break at any moment. Halfway up, I chickened out, and decided to instead try one of the smaller, sturdier looking towers. Once up the top of my smaller tower, I was able to walk along the top of the walls, and have an amazing panoramic view of the town. There is a clock on the side of one of the towers, and being the oldest clock in Lucerne, it has the privilege of chiming one minute before the rest in the town.
Next, I headed to ´The Dying Lion of Lucerne´ a lion carved out of a rock face in memory of the Swiss who died at the Tuileries in 1792. Apparently Mark Twain describes the monument as ´the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world´. It has a garden surrounding it and this lovely pond in front of it, which was all lovely and peaceful until a bus load of American tourists showed up.
I then headed across Spreuer Bridge, a wooden bridge that has these monsterous frescoes painted in the ceilings by the artist Kaspar Megliger. There are 67 paintings in all, and are titled ´The Dance of Death´, as each of them has at least one skeleton in it. Freaky. I then headed across another similar bridge, this one the more famous of the two, called the Chapel Bridge. This one was constructed first (14th century) and has more pleasant paintings that illustrate the biographies of the town´s patron saints, Leodegar and Mauritious. The Chapel Bridge also has an octagonal water tower attached to its side, which over the centuries has been used as everything from storing archives to a torture chamber.
After lunch I went to the tourist office to purchase my round trip ticket up Mt Pilatus, Switzerland´s highest point. 70 Francs later (ouch!), I headed up the side of the mountain on the steepest cog train in the world - at it´s steepest it reaches 48 degrees! After climbing 4000 metres, we reached the top. It was very misty, so you couldn´t see down, but the view on the way up was spectacular. I had to resort to buying a postcard of the view, so I didn´t miss out. The way down was via aerial gondolas, which were very high up, and kind of swung if you moved too much. AHHH!!! While it cost me a lot of money to go up (a day´s budget), I´m glad I did. It was a beautiful view, and a lot of fun getting there.
And now I´m back at Nadine´s house. It´s my last night in Bern, tomorrow I´ll head to Interlaken, where I´ll chill for a couple of days before heading to Spain.
Talk to you soon!
Love Hayley xxx
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