Lucerne
I got into Lucerne quite late, but stayed two nights so I had a full day there.
On my first night, I went out after checking into the hotel, but didn't
make it into town, just grabbing a kebab from the first shop I came to.
This is definitely the best cheap option in Switzerland!
Tuesday 10th August
After breakfast in the hotel I went back to the station where I paid
19 francs for a 24 hour "LucerneCard" that would give me free public
transport and a 50% discount on admission to most of the museums and
other attractions. I spent the rest of the day making the most of that.
I crossed the Kapellbrücke, built in 1333 but mostly rebuilt after a fire
in 1993, then walked through the old city and came back over the 1408
Spreuerbrücke, which brought me to the Historiches Museum. This had
a strange system where all the exhibits have barcodes and one carries
around a scanner which gives information on them. It's a bit clunky,
but worked reasonably well — better than most audioguides, anyway.
Some sections of the city walls were being repaired, but I climbed one
of the towers and then headed for the 19th century era attractions:
the Bourbaki Panorama, the Glacier Museum, and the Alpineum.
The Bourbaki Panorama was surprisingly interesting -- the story of the Bourbaki
Army was largely new to me, though it had got a mention in the Red
Cross museum in Geneva. The Gletschergarten or Glacier Museum contains
some features carved by glacial action, but also has a geological and
geographical museum, old houses and furnishings (hosting a temporary
teddy bear plague), a hall of mirrors, and a viewing tower, among other
attractions.
Lunch was chicken and mushroom in a restaurant just below the cathedral,
after which I walked along the lake to the Verkehrshaus or Transport
Museum, which is apparently Switzerland's most visited museum. It is
a huge complex of buildings, containing planes, trains, cars, etc. etc.
with all kinds of interactive exhibits. There's lots of stuff for kids
but plenty for adults, and with English for most of the displays I could
easily have spent longer here.
I caught the bus back into town, but got to the Picasso museum just
before it closed, so decided against paying for a fifteen minute visit.
Then I walked around the churches, before finding a restaurant where I
could sit on the riverfront and watch the world go by. (Paying €6.50 for
a bottle of mineral water, gack!)
Internet access (3 francs an hour) didn't work in my room, but did when
sitting in the corridor outside...
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