Day 9 – Lucerne, Switzerland – Saturday September 28

 

Today was a bittersweet day.  It was time to leave the ship.  We docked at Basel, Switzerland and boarded buses to head to Lucerne, Switzerland.

The ship we had spent the last nine days on was the Emerald Dawn.  Our group was a part of the Mayflower Cruises and Tour and there was another Mayflower group on the ship. However, the majority of the people on the ship had just booked the Emerald Dawn cruise and their trip was either over, or they were departing to travel to other parts of Europe.  Our Mayflower Group boarded a bus heading to Lucerne, Switzerland for two days.

Once again it was a rainy day as we drove on the interstate (or whatever you call it in Europe).  It was interesting to see how many tunnels we went through.  Rather than building the road to go over the mountain, they built an auto tunnel through the mountain.

Once we arrived in Lucerne, we started our tour of the city by visiting the Lion Statue.  The was carved in the 1800’s as a monument to the Swiss mercenaries that lost their lives during the French Revolution.  It was declared to “the fate and virtue of the Swiss”.

We walked through the city in the rain and crossed over the Chapel Bridge.  The original bridge was hit by a boat and burned down, but they rebuilt it  look exactly the same.  The triangular pictures that adorned the inside of the bridge were the originals.  

We continued to walk to a Jesuit Church and went inside.  That is when the tour dissolved.    Part of the group traveled to Bern, Switzerland via car, while the rest of us roamed around the city.

This was our first look at Mt Pilatus

Many of us took advantage of the rainy weather to visit the stores in town to get out of the rain.  We were staying at the Grand Hotel Europe that was a couple bus stops from downtown and only a half block from Lake Lucerne.