The Most Beautiful City in Switzerland :)

I have no statistics to prove it but in my opinion, Lucerne is the most beautiful city in Switzerland. It is everything you picture Switzerland to be, all in one city! On Saturday, Krista and I (our 'group' had diminished somewhat!) set off for Lucerne. We caught the 8:14 bus outside the base, took the train to Bern and then transferred trains to Lucerne. The trip took 2 hours and we were treated to Switzerland's beautiful scenery (if you could see it through the fog! The snow has stopped and the rains have come....Switzerland's fog is reminding me of England!)

On our way!!

To find our way around the city, all we had was a black-and-white photocopy map - we found the tourist info place right at the end of the day, just as it closed :) But we impressed even ourselves with our navigational skills...kind of....actually, not really but I'll get to that later! The one tourist attraction we knew about was a lion carving, so we made our way there. We bumped into a lost Asian tourist looking for the same thing so we went together...all my warning bells started ringing when he told us it was 'through this alley' but turns out he actually knew where he was going! And it was amazing! The lion was carved into a massive wall of rock! It was so detailed, the pictures did not do it justice. Our Asian tourist took a photo of us and then we went our separate ways.

 

One of the first places we went into was a church, and that started us on a quest to go into all the churches we could find. We were very successful! I was just awestruck at their beauty and individuality - I find I really sense God's presence in those majestic churches so that was a really special part of the day :)

We came to a place were the old town walls still stood and climbed up the hill to view the city. Amazing! Someone had told Krista about this great bakery in Lucerne so we made that our next stop...haha,big laugh!! We got our bridges confused (Lucerne is divided by a river and has multiple bridges connecting both sides) and took a wrong turn. A half hour of walking later, when everything was looking a bit rundown and there was a sign say 'Industrial area' (in German, might I add) we came to the conclusion that we were lost. After standing around talking about what could possibly have gone wrong and what we should do about it, we decided to turn back. We asked someone for help - he said he himself was a tourist but he clearly had a better map! We realised our mistake and took the half hour walk back, this time on the other side of the river to change the scenery :) We found the bakery and thawed out before spending the next few hours winding through the cobblestone streets of the city. Everything is so cute! At the end of every little shop-lined street there is a little square with a fountain in it. So Europe!

One side of Lucerne

Cutsy cobblestone streets!

Lucerne's famous Water Tower Bridge - the one we should have taken!

The long lost bakery! We realised that we had been standing in front of it when we started our journey to find it!

Later in the day we came across a parade just about to start! We couldn't believe our luck (although maybe not really luck - turns out it was a demonic parade or something!)! These important people were riding camels (watching an important-looking lady wearing a white fluffy coat try and get on a camel is possibly one of the funniest things I will ever see) and some mask-wearing people were playing instruments. Apparently in Switzerland when you go parading down a city street, you don't bother blocking the street at the other end. All theses cars kept coming down the street and then getting stuck trying to quickly turn back around because they were being chased by these trumpet-blowing masks!! Haha, I enjoyed myself immensely! I had to do the touristy thing and get a photo....

By this time it was getting late and cold but we wanted to stay till sunset. Something I forgot to say is that Lucerne is surrounded by the Alps and sunset is apparently the best time to get pictures. Webset out to find a cute little Swiss restaurant but everything was sooo expensive. We did settled on a very cute restaurant...but bought a hamburger :) We actually both really appreciated the familiarity of it and were glad we hadn't gone for yet another Swiss dish!

Just so you can appreciate our excitement! Jessi, stop freaking out...I know its not GF but sometimes you just have to make exceptions!

We walked outside to a beautiful sunset and filled up our memory cards with photo after photo of the alps! I  can't even describe how surreal it was, the alps are so close it felt like you could just reach out and touch them! We had to walk across a bridge to get back to the train and as we were crossing and looking at the sunset and the alps, all the church bells started ringing...BLESS!! It was so beautiful I wanted to cry :) We were so blessed on our trip home, we hadn't planned any times and unknowingly caught the right train which connected us to the other right train which took us to the last bus back to Wiler! We crashed into bed after a full-on 12 hour day of walking but I loved every minute of it! If you ever go to Switzerland, go to Lucerne!