Traveling Europe - Luzern, Switzerland!

Switzerland was AMAZING!  I was worried it wouldn’t be as wonderful as I had hoped after growing up in beautiful Utah, but it totally exceeded my expectations!  Upon our arrival in Luzern we bought a three-day pass which gave us unlimited access to all the trains, cable cars, boats, and buses in the whole area.  We had three days to explore three mountains in Luzern and it was fabulous!

The afternoon we arrived we spent time walking around the lovely city of Luzern.  It is set in the valley surrounded by the Swiss Alps, and is so picturesque!  The only problem is Switzerland is crazy expensive!  I thought London was bad, but Switzerland is way more expensive!! 

Walking around the beautiful city!

We hiked up to the top of a hill and got a lovely view!

On the first of our three day pass, we went to the top of Mt. Pilatus.  We took a boat ride across Lake Luzern, then boarded the steepest cog train in the world and took it to the top of the mountain.  Once on top, we hiked around for a while, then we took two different cable cars down.  What a fabulous day!

Boat ride across the lake.

At the top of Mt. Pilatus!

The views were amazing!

That's the train we took up the mountain!

Here's the cable car we took down!

And a second cable car we took down!

On the second day we went to the top of Mt. Rigi.  Once again we started with a boat ride across the lake.  Next we boarded a train which took us to the top of the mountain.  We got some great views from up top.  We were planning to take a two-hour hike to another peak when suddenly the clouds grew dark and the rains set in.  We decided it would be a long time before we ever made it back to Switzerland again, so we hiked for two hours through the Alps in lightning, thunder, and rain.  It was awesome.  Amazingly enough, just as we reached the summit the clouds cleared and we got an amazing view!

Boat ride across the beautiful lake!

At the top of Mt. Rigi!

Here the storm is setting in!  It got so foggy we could hardly see anything on our hike!  Amazingly enough Tyson slept through the whole hike!

We couldn't believe how the clouds cleared when we reached the top!

What an amazing sight!

Here we are taking the cable car down.  You can see the view in the background!

Waiting for the boat at the bottom of the mountain.

On our third day we weren’t so lucky.  The weather was awful.  We still decided to make the most of our three-day pass, so we took another train to the top of a third mountain.  We walked around a little bit and then took the cable car down.  Afterwards we did a little more sightseeing in town, then took the train to Zurich to spend the night.  Then next morning we caught a bus to Munich.  All in all, a fabulous time in Switzerland!

This cable car was awesome because we could stand on the top of it!  Unfortunately you can see our view were pretty limited.

Even though the clouds covered the view below, they provided their own lovely setting!

It was neat to be up above the clouds!

Back in town we explored the city a little more.  I loved the buildings in Switzerland!

We visited the Lion Monument, a carving in the rock to honor brave Swiss soldiers lost in war.  

Off to Munich and southern Germany for the final few days of our trip!