My wife and I have always enjoyed traveling, taking our first European trip when we were around 25. At that point we picked Switzerland, because it seemed safe, friendly, and beautiful. Since then, we’ve visited Europe every couple of years.
Last year we left the kids at home and had a great time in Austria and Germany. There were so many sights that I thought they would have enjoyed, that this year I decided to take the kids with us despite their lukewarm interest. My son, probably enticed by the thought of good chocolate, suggested Switzerland. Since my wife and I hadn’t been there since that first trip, we thought it a good time to re-visit it.
As usual, my first stop was the Rick Steves videos on the topic. There are two main ones: Great Swiss Cities, and the Jungfrau Region. I enjoy watching the videos to get a general feel for the areas we might want to visit. After that, we pick a couple of places to use as bases, then figure out flights, hotels, and transportation. We generally try to stay three or four nights in each location.
In this case, we figured we’d spend a few days in Lucerne, then a few days in Mürren, then… we wanted to try to relive a portion of our first trip, the Glacier Express. We have fond memories of the long train ride through the many valleys and tunnels, so we wanted to both experience it again, and share it with our kids. The availability of tickets forced us to juggle our schedule a bit, and we ended up with a final couple of days of our trip staying one night in Zermatt and one night in Samedan.
We took an overnight flight from the U.S. to Zürich, then an immediate train to Lucerne. We had purchased an 8-day Swiss rail pass, but were spending 10 days in Switzerland, so we bought train tickets at the airport, and enjoyed the hour or so ride to Lucerne. When we arrived, it was just starting to rain, so we dug out our jackets and dragged our luggage a few blocks (in the wrong direction at first) to our hotel, the Renaissance.
We had booked separate rooms for the kids and for us. Our room wasn’t ready, but the kids’ was. Tired from the trip and not really having slept on the flight, we all piled into the single king bed and slept for a few hours. Once we woke up and unpacked into both rooms, were headed out to stretch our legs, check out the city, and find some dinner.
At this point I’d like to put in a thanks to T-mobile. When we arrived in Zürich and powered up our phones, we received texts telling us that we had free data and texts while in Europe, and that voice calls would be $0.20 per minute. Having a free data connection available everywhere is awesome. It’s great for using with maps, Trip Advisor, Yelp and Deutsche Bahn apps, etc.
Our walk had taken us out near the well-rated Wirsthaus Taube, so we popped in there for our first Swiss meal. The kids are generally picky eaters, which is one of the reasons we don’t take them on every trip, but they were able to find food that they enjoyed, as did we. The food was good, as was the wine. This was typically the case wherever we ate.
Over the next couple of days we visited the Lion, viewed the Panorama, climbed the towers, walked the promenade, and generally enjoyed the city. The Panorama, which I had thought was going to be a 360° view of Lucerne in the mid-1800s was instead a 360° view of men and horses dying during the Franco-Prussian war. I don’t know where I received my mistaken impression.
[To be continued]