Suggestions for activities in and day trips out of Lucerne.

it is expensive no matter what. But on the weekend maybe take the train from Luzern to Lauterbrunnen Valley and stay in Murren or Gimmelwald. From there you can maybe take a mountain excursion or hike.

What a wonderful opportunity! Start with reading the Rick Steves Switzerland guide book, especially about Lucerne/Luzern and the surrounding area including Mount Rigi and Mount Pilatus. Also read about visiting nearby Mount Titlis. And also about taking the Golden Pass train route through the Berner Oberland. The book gives explicit info about how to get his recommended spots--there are so many! And be sure to take advantage of the Tourist Information resource at the Luzern train station (track 3).

My favorites:

Lucerne/Luzern:
Walk in the Old Town with the cobblestone, pedestrian-only streets and plazas, and with the 500-year-old buildings with murals painted on them depicting their (original) use, and with gilded wrought iron shop signs. Walk up into the clock tower museum and up along the ramparts of the old town wall. Walk across the wooden walking bridges, over the Reuss River. Eat at outdoor cafes along the river, weather permitting, or inside. Eat chocolate truffles from little chocolate shops all over (my favorite is Au Cachet: la maison du chocolat, at Pfistergasse 15) but it was hard to choose, requiring lengthy research! My favorite traditional restaurant is Zunfthausrestaurant Pfistern. It's on the river in the old town. They have a delicious Luzern specialty that's a big ball of pastry puff filled with a creamy stew of veal, pork, mushrooms, apples, and raisins. It's expensive, though, as are most restaurants in Switzerland. The best way to save money is to either share a meal in a restaurant, or get meals from either grocery stores or bakeries. Manor/Manora department store includes a restaurant on the top floor with a view of the city. Coop and Migros are the main grocery stores. I love seeing the Weeping Lion war memorial statue a few blocks outside the old town. Further away is the Transportation Museum (Verkershaus) with loads of hands-on transportation themed exhibits aimed at children. A nice art museum in town is the Rosengart Collection. Ask your hotel for a visitor's card and a transportation card for discounts in museums and local public transit.

My favorite easy hike in the area is on Mount Rigi, from the Kaltbad station. It's level with a view of Lake Lucerne and the mountains, but it's in pasture areas and part of it is along a cliff. To get there you take a lake ship/ferry to Rigi-Vitznau and catch the cog rail train up Rigi mountain to Rigi-Kaltbad. The path goes to the left and to the right from there. To get back to Luzern, take the cable car from Rigi-Kaltbad down to Rigi-Weggis, follow the signs down to the ship dock and take the ship/ferry back to Luzern.

You can also sightsee Mt. Pilatus near Luzern. The cog rail train reveals some interesting geological formations along the way.

You can take a train to Engelberg and get a series of cable cars up to Mt. Titlis, where a chair lift carries you over a glacier.

A super gorgeous train ride from Luzern is on the Golden Pass route which begins on track 12 in the Luzern train station. You can take it past glacier lakes, mountains, and waterfalls through the Berner Oberland. If you have time, when it gets to Interlaken Ost, change trains to the little Lauterbrunnen regional train which takes you into the valley near the Jungfrau Mountain. Then, at Lauterbrunnen, change trains to go up to Kleine Scheidegg to be immersed in the alps.

Yes, your first step should be to get Rick Steves Switzerland. Start with his Luzern chapter and see what you want to do there.

If the weather's good, you can take a day trip to the Berner Oberland; if it's not good, don't bother. Check the webcams at https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/live/webcams/ and https://schilthorn.ch/en/Infos/Live#livecam before setting out, to avoid a very expensive frustration.

I agree that Mt. Rigi makes a great excursion from Luzern; it gets you on the lake and up to a mountain, albeit not as spectacular as the Berner Oberland, but a lot closer (and therefore cheaper).

When you say "reasonable shopping," what are you looking to buy? Most stuff for sale in Switzerland is either much higher priced than in the US, or is luxury priced to begin with (watches, etc). When I needed a backpack on my recent trip there because the tote I was using tore, I went to Migros, a lower end department store (a rough equivalent in the US might be Target), and found one for 20 CHF. They also had men's wallets with coin purses, for less than they would cost in the US. But unless you actually need something the way I did, I wouldn't think of shopping in Switzerland, unless you're loaded.

Of course, if you simply must have a "Swiss" souvenir, I remember seeing a Victorinox vegetable peeler in a gift shop in Luzern for 5 CHF.

More seriously, the best deals on food are in supermarkets. Swiss chocolate bought there is inexpensive, particularly the store brand from Coop; actually, all of the Coop store brand (Prix Garantie) is cheap. I bought a tube of their hand cream for 1 CHF! They also have all kinds of prepared take out foods. One night, my dinner was gazpacho and pasta salad - delicious and pretty cheap. One fun thing in Swiss supermarkets is "picnic eggs" - precooked hard boiled eggs, dyed bright colors to prevent confusion with raw eggs. They're sold next to the raw eggs, and both kinds are unrefrigerated (so, don't look in the refrigerator section for them).

For sit down meals, if you don't want to spend 20 CHF for a pizza or burger, or 45-60 CHF for a meal, your best deal will be at Manora. This is a restaurant/buffet on the top floor of Manor (a fancier department store than Migros or Coop). The food isn't sitting on steam tables, but is prepared for you (for instance, if you order fish, they take a piece of raw fish off the ice, cook it for you, and hand it to you). With a main course, for 3 CHF extra you can add beilage, meaning all the veggies, fries, pasta, etc., that you can fit on the plate. Delicious, with lots of variety, and half the price of a restaurant with table service. The only catches are that it's always mobbed, since the Swiss know it's the best deal in town, and it's only open department store hours, meaning early dinner Monday through Friday, lunch only on Saturdays, and no meals on Sundays.

There is a Tibits in the train station; it's hidden on the top floor, while most of the other train station eateries are on the bottom floor. This is a vegetarian buffet; you pay by weight, and it's not expensive (for Switzerland). This is open every day for lunch and dinner, so it's a good option when Manora is closed.

When you say "one museum," did you mean a fine arts museum or another kind? I wasn't as taken with the Museum of Transportation in Luzern as many others are, and it's very expensive, but it may be up your alley.

As you can see, a recurrent theme of my post is high Swiss prices. They are real, so do prepare in advance to prevent your whole visit being marred by sticker shock. Once you see what things cost, you'll see why I focus so much on supermarkets and Manora, and why you'll want to de-emphasize shopping (except the window variety).

I should clarify something I said, above, about finding the Rigi-Kaltbad hike. When I said, "The path goes to the left and to the right from there" I meant that when you step off the train, there's a path (called "Blumenpfad" on blue signs) that you can get to by either walking away from the left side of the train, across the plaza and along the Blumenpfad trail, to the overlook with a telescope at Känzeli, or, instead, walking away from the right side of the train at Kaltbad, along the Blumenpfad trail to get to First and on from there to the cliff walk over the lake.

Also, I should add that Victorinox controls prices on all its merchandise to keep them the same throughout Switzerland. So if you want a souvenir pocket knife, or anything else by that brand (luggage, backpack, vegetable peeler) you can buy it as soon as you find the Victorinox store in Luzern's Old Town (Altstadt) without worrying about comparing prices at souvenir shops. Also, they'll engrave your name on it, there, on request.

Good food there, other than what has been previously mentioned above by Harold or me, is cheese fondue, local lake fish (like trout and perch), pork with a creamy mushroom sauce, rösti (rustic hash browns) with local sausage and onion sauce, and for dessert, ice cream with whipped cream, or custard tart baked with fresh local fruit. Also, I love the gemischte salad which is a plate of different kinds of salads. What they call French salad dressing is a seasoned herbal white creamy dressing, a little like our Ranch dressing. A "fitness teller" is a plate of salad with your choice of meat/fish. I usually ate my restaurant meals at lunchtime when the prices then are lower. So the salad meals are 18 to 25 francs/dollars, rösti dishes are about 25, and meat dishes about 28 to 38 francs/dollars. And I shared many of them with my husband, so it was half that price per person. The reason why I said, in my earlier post, that you can buy your meals from bakeries, is because bakeries everywhere in Switzerland sell sandwiches, and for reasonable prices.

Wow, I love all of your ideas! Yes, I do have Rick Steve's guide book and will definitely use it. My daughter is a graphic designer so a fine arts museum would be nice as well as a history museum. I really appreciate getting all the information about specific places to get good meals. It sounds like other than a couple of small souvenirs we will probably just be window shopping! We are so excited about our trip. Thank you for your insight.

Since you have 10 days, if you have not planned so already, make a day trip to Bern and Zurich. The latter will have the best variety of shopping and museums within easy reach. They are within a reasonable distance for an easy day trip.

If you are true fashion shopping hounds, it's possible (but difficult, 2.5hrs each way) to get from Lucerne to Chiasso. At Chiasso (actually Mendrisio) is a luxury Foxtown factory outlet, with top European brands at decent prices.