Day 8: City Tour of Lucerne

Just a note before I start talking about our wonderful day in Lucerne. Be sure to check out the earlier posts about our trip by either scrolling down to the bottom of this page and clicking on "older posts" or clicking on the links to the right of the page listed by month.

This trip keeps getting better as each day goes by. We started out with temperatures of 6-8 degrees C (maybe low 40s?) and Friday we saw and felt temperatures around 20 degrees C (maybe around 60s?). The scenery keeps getting better too! Now back to our regularly scheduled post...

I'm splitting this post into three because I took a lot of photos on Friday.

We started the day at the Hotel Europe just across the street from Lake Lucerne.






The Swiss spelling of Lucerne is Luzern. Its population is about 67,000. It is surrounded at least on 3 sides by mountains.



We took the bus into the center of town to visit the Lion Monument.






It was built in honor of Swiss soldiers serving the French King Louis XVI who were killed during the French Revolution.






We took the opportunity to snap a group photo...almost all of the Indiana group are visible...not everyone found a window!



After the lion, we visited the wooden bridge which was originally built in the 1300s (I think...might need to ask Mr. Google!)












Unfortunately, in 1993, the middle portion of the bridge was destroyed by fire. You can see the charred triangles below that used to be paintings depicting the history of the city.



Here are a few that survived.



In the middle rebuilt section, they left the eaves empty to remind people of what happened.






We stopped at a beautiful church but I didn't get its name. We were able to hear the organ playing as we looked inside.






Some more shots during a city walking tour...



Another wooden bridge was being renovated.















Next up...our Alpine Mountain Excursion...

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