Lovely Luzern

Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland
After staying up until 7pm I woke at 9pm ravenous for breakfast. I stayed awake for awhile, Bryan was awake too. We split a nut bar and had some water. We decided to wake Desmond at this point and feed him so that he wouldn't wake us later when he realized he was hungry. It was a gamble, but it paid off. I removed his binky and put part of a Zbar in his hand. I started talking to him to wake him, "Desmond, are you hungry?" He stretched his little hand holding the bar up above his head. "Would you like to eat a Zbar?" Immediately, without even opening his eyes, he brought his hand to his mouth and began eating. I had him eat and drink some water and use the toilet and then had him lie down again. He was understandably confused, but when the lights were all off he quickly fell back asleep and slept until after we got up at 4:30am.

We ate some food from our bags . Desmond had an applesauce that the flight attendant had sent with us "for [our] journey." I spread some jam that we had kept from our flight onto the last bagel we had brought from home. I poured water I'd cooled in our little fridge into glasses and shared them around. All in all I had a fun time getting everyone fed and the hotel room tidied up. The room had a little breakfast drink station that included peppermint tea. I made some and put a bit in a small espresso cup for Desmond. He was over the moon about it and went around for about half an hour crowing over his tea. :)

We got ready at a leisurely pace, amused by the heated mirror in the bathroom and generally putting our amenities to good use. We were out the door to take a walk around 6:30am. We headed for the train station to see if the bakery that I had gotten a milk-free pastry from four years ago still had anything I could eat. They did! After admitting that my request was "tricky" there were two vegan pastries to choose from. I got one with plum in it, and couldn't have been happier. Bryan got a roll. The lady gave him he choice of the "chocolate" and the "more chocolate." He chose the more chocolate.

We walked the town in the early morning snapping pictures and sharing memories of last time we were here. We fed Desmond little bites of our baked goods and watched as locals set up the flea market . We lifted the lightweight stroller over many short flights of steps as we crossed the covered bridges and walked around Old Town.

Desmond liked the swans swimming in the river. Then we saw lots of little fish jumping and got to watch as a man with a fishing pole caught one and reeled it in. Then we went over for a walk by the lake. We enjoyed the view. Desmond liked the sleeping ducks and playing in the gravel.

Next we walked back to the hotel and spent some time regrouping before it was time to check out. Desmond enjoyed the view from our window and told me all about it. We checked out a little bit earlier than we needed to so to kill time before meeting up with our friend Bethie (who has been teaching in Germany this past year) we went to a park near the hotel. What we didn't know was that this was going to be Desmond-Heaven. There were buckets and shovels and sand and water. He could scoop and dump again and again. And we were only there for twenty minutes . There were tears when we left. Poor little guy.

Have we mentioned that Switzerland is expensive? Even with free lodging the food prices give us sticker-shock. I paid nearly $5 for a large fry and one ketchup packet for us to share as we waited in the McDonalds across the street from the train station for Bethie to arrive. But you do get the code that is good for using the restroom (which was handy since Desmond was dirty and needed his hands and feet washed off after playing in the park). Just as we were finishing up our fries, Bethie arrived, smiling. It is good to see her again.

We shared our plan of taking a lake cruise and she was game, so we went and got our Eurail Passes validated (you have to have all people that purchased passes together present to validate them) and then went to the docks to board our boat. There was some confusion as to what pier to be at, and while that was sorted out, Desmond stomped in some little puddles he found . The boat seemed kind of crowded when we got on, but our Eurail Passes are 1st class (which is mandatory because of our age) so we were able to sit in the less crowded 1st class section of the boat.

We enjoyed the cruise and Bryan and I took turns walking a very enthusiastic Desmond around the ship. We sailed to a little town called Weggis. We walked down the promenade a ways and then enjoyed a simple PB&J picnic lunch with an incredible view. The weather so far, has been amazing. We laughed that I had to spread our sandwiches with Desmond's spoon, because we don't have a knife.

After our picnic came a walk back to the pier to catch the return trip to Luzern. Once we were back, we went and got gelato. Desmond had fallen asleep so the other three of us indulged without him. He continue to sleep while we retrieved our bags, waited for and boarded the train.

The train was not very full and we shared our first class car with only one other parry, to start with . They were also English speakers and made for very amusing people watching.

They views on this train ride were as breathtaking as we remembers them being. Desmond, who had been so excited about riding a train and had been asking often in the last 24 hours "Ride a train today?" slept through almost the whole thing. We woke Desmond just as we were arriving so he could see we had, in fact, been on a train as we'd assured him we would. Bryan held him in his arms and he fell back asleep and fell forward toward the window. As we were getting off the train Desmond woke enough to ask "More?" We all had a good chuckle that he probably thought the ride would be longer. Fortunately for him, there will be many train rides during this trip.

After buying our tickets for tomorrow's excursion up to Schilthorn, we walked from the train station to our hotel. This is the only non-chain hotel room we will be staying in on this trip, and our expectations were lower due to that fact . Even so, the room was unimpressive. As we walked in we were overwhelmed by the heat. No air conditioning, but there were two fans in the room (blowing hot air around). There was a double bed up in the loft, two twins in the main room, a free-standing standing closet, a table and a small bathroom. There was a TV, but that is an amenity that we don't use, so that doesn't count for much in our book. I had to go request the crib, but they brought it soon after and set it up for us.

To escape the heat we decided to go in search of dinner. Everything was as expensive as we expected, and nothing looked so amazing as to justify it. Hard to drop $60 on dinner for two (more after you get drinks) if it isn't something that sounds particularly good. We walked all up and down the main strip without finding anything we felt good about. We considered asking at the front desk, but our hotel had three restaurants attached to it and they would only recommend those, we were sure. Finally we decided to try the Happy Inn Lodge which was a bit off the main street and where we had stayed last time we were here and had enjoyed their fries.

We got there and I saw there was a step into the restaurant. I bent down to pick up the front of the stroller and lifted to get Desmond over the step as we have been doing over and over again on this trip (thanks to our amazingly light stroller and seamless teamwork) . Unbeknownst to me, Bryan wasn't ready to go in yet, and was instead getting ready to look over the posted menu. So up went the base of the stroller and it fell over backwards, Desmond's head saved from the concrete by the daypack hung on the handles. Desmond was scared and reproachful. I felt awful.

We did end up going in over the step after all. We all decided to get a burger and fries. A hungry Desmond stacked condiments while we waited for our food. The burgers were not what we expected. Everything was very salty, and the burgers had tarter sauce on the bottom and some sort of salsa on the top. We polished them off anyway along with some cider and apple schrole that Bethie suggested.

Once dinner was over we went and enjoyed a nice walk along the river. Desmond got to get out of his stroller and walk too. He looked for ducks, but we didn't see a single bird during our walk. We did find something far better though. A mini digger . He went up to it, talked about it, pointed to it, and got his photo taken with it. He asked Bryan to climb up into it. Bryan explained he couldn't because it wasn't ours, and after a few more minutes of looking, told Desmond to say "bye bye" to the digger. He didn't. This is the first time he hasn't been able to say goodbye to a preferred item and walk away. It was just that cool to him. Eventually he managed to part with digger and we continued back to the hotel.

Noisy soccer celebrations kept us awake late into the night. Apparently everyone was watching a big game on TV and then there was great, loud rejoicing (for about an hour) when Portugal won the game. Desmond seemed determined to match the noise with his loud repetitive babble "Everygubby out! Everygubby out!" The noises finally died down and we were able to get to sleep around midnight.

It had been a long, but good day. ~ Merilee

I love the train system in Europe . Riding around on the trains is really a highlight for me. So, once again we are using a railpass to get around. Ours allows us unlimited train travel on 6 days that we choose. It's a real steal on days that you make multiple trips or long trips. We were able to cover about half the cost of the pass using a Barclay Arrival card that reimburses travel expenses.

The passes include other perks as well. We have an app on our phones that gives us the details depending on the country we are in. In Switzerland, it includes use of the many passenger boats on the alpine lakes. So, we got a free lake cruise with our train ride. Bonus.

We had gone to the TI to get information on the lake cruise and the gal was full of information. She let us know the options of everything we could do. What I wanted was a recommendation of what we should do. It took quite a bit of convincing to get one! That was odd.

~ Bryan
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Comments

Andrea
2016-07-08

Poor Desmond sleeping thru all his train rides. At least there's tea!

Jaynie Roberts
2016-07-08

I'm enjoying your updates. Xxx love to Bethie.

2025-02-10

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