Lucerne

While Gemma hiked down off Mount Pilatus I wandered through the old town of Lucerne exploring small lanes and streets.

Window detail and self portrait

Wedding photographer and wedding party

Mount Pilatus

Finally I have a few minutes to blog. We've been so busy and little access to internet. We've been travelling with my son and his partner over the weekend and they are younger and fitter than me and it's been go, go, go - mostly up hills. Everywhere we go involves a walk up hill or stairs! I huff and puff a lot, Gemma enjoys every minute.

View from Mt Pilatus near Lucerne

 On our second day in Switzerland we went by train to Lucerne. The weather forecast we for rain and we wanted to go to the top of Mount Pilatus so we were keeping our fingers crossed that it would clear.

To get to the top of the mountain is easy and there are several options. We chose to go by local train to Alpnachstad then up the mountain on a cog rail train. There are several restuarants and vewing areas at the top. Then we came came half way down via cable car. Gemma walked down to a bus stop near Lucerne while I took a cable car down the rest of the way and explored old Lucerne while I waited for her.

We were very lucky because the weather was clear while we were at the top.

Cog rail, Alpnachstad

Cows, with bells, in the high pasture. We could hear then from the top of the mountain.

The clouds arrived just as we started to descend.

Zurich

Three days in to our holiday and this is the first chance I've had to update the blog. We've been a little bit busy.

We few directly to Zurich and arrived about 7.00 am suffering from sleep deprivation but thankfully Glenn was there to meet us and we didn't need to think about transport connections.

Limmat River, Zurich

After freshening up we headed straight into to city for the day. Who would have thought?? Zurich was hot and humid, mid thirties and very humid. It was a shock after the cold Victorian winter. Zurich locals and tourists were out in force along the shore of the beautiful lake, sunbathing, swimming, boating.

One of the first things we noticed as we walked from the tram station to the city was a florist with an familiar plant for sale, Leucophyta brownii Cushion Bush, that grows along the south coast of Victoria.

The Old Zurich buildings are beautiful, lovely laneways branch off in all directions tempting the unwary the unwary tourist to lose sense of direction, architectural details on almost every building slow progress to snails pace/

Coffee grinder

Small museum in an underground carparknear the opera house.
It records the results of archeological work undertaken during the construction
 of the car park. They found evidence of human occupation in the different layers.

Some of the stone tools found during the dig.

Extra large soap bubbles provided by an entertainer on the lake's foreshore.

We explored sections of the old town and then walked a kilometre or two along the edge of the lake to the casino. No, not to gamble. There is a small jetty there and we boarded a small ferry that travels from there to several other jetties on the lake and then up the Zimmat River through the beautiful Old Town of Zurich.

Innsbruck

Today Sarah and Glenn have gone to work and we are having a rest day - although sometimes resting feels like hard work because we have just returned from a walk to the local shopping centre where we managed to do just three things: a) find a hole in the wall so we could get some Swiss francs - we only had euros
b) spend some francs on a salad roll and a coffee - luckily the girl serving us spoke English
c) spend some more francs on some items in the supermarket - we managed to annoy the checkout chick by not pre-weighing our fruit and veg

We've had a fantastic weekend in the Bavarian alpine region of Germany about five hours east of Zurich. Glenn was able to interpret for us but that became increasingly more difficult because he lost his voice completely (the remnant of a cold), and Sarah wasn't with us because she had to work on Friday. The funniest was Phil trying to explain that he just wanted a mug of hot water - no coffee, no tea, no lemon. The first attempt resulted in a glass of tepid tap water.

On Friday we headed out on a motorway that followed Lake Zurich and then along various valleys, several toll points, border checkpoints and through numerous tunnels to Innsbruck. The longest tunnel was about 15 kms long. The snow-capped mountains were astonishingly beautiful.

We had lunch in the centre of Innsbruck, the capital city of the Tyrol region of Austria. Traffic is excluded from the narrow streets, cafes abound and we wandered through the town and along the river admiring the lovely old buildings. It suffered badly from bomb attacks in WW2 but the old town looks great today and is a popular destination because of festivals and winter sports as well. I was sorry to leave.