Friday, July 2nd, 2010
We left the hotel this morning around 9:30 and caught the 10:04 train to Luzern. Upon our arrival in Luzern around 11:00 we stopped in the tourist information office to get a proper map. The map showed a “city walk” which I believe you could actually pay for a guided tour that followed this path around the city, but we opted to walk it ourselves.
Luzern is famous for is covered bridges, so appropriately, our first stop was the Chapel Bridge. The bridge was built in the 14th century as part of the city’s fortification, but sadly much of it was destroyed, including 81 of 111 paintings which adorned its archways, in a fire in 1993, the bridge and some of the paintings have since been restored. After crossing the bridge, we made our way down the river to the lake side and walked up to the Hof Church. A monastery was founded here in the 8th century, but again the church was sadly destroyed by fire in 1633 but was rebuilt in 1645. It is the most important Renaissance church in Switzerland. After taking some photos of the church we headed away from the lake front for a while until we reached the Lions Monument. The Lion’s Monument or “The Dying Lion of Luzern” was carved out of the natural rock in memory of the heroic death of Swiss mercenaries at the Tuileries in 1792. It is considered to be one of the saddest most moving monuments in the World. From here we made our way towards the pedestrian “Old Town” of Luzern, and grabbed a quick an relatively cheap (at least according to Swiss standards) lunch.
After lunch we walked again way from the river and up the hill to the Musegg Wall. The wall was built in 1386. Three of its towers are accessibly by the public, although Tim and I went up none of them, as our legs are still incredibly sore from our Alpine hike. One of the towers, the Zyt tower, has the oldest clock in Luzern, which is privileged to chime every hour one minute before all the other clocks in Luzern. After walking along the Musegg Wall we made our way back down the hill to the “Old Town” and to the river front again where we crossed the Spreuer Bridge where one has an excellent view of the Needle Dam, which was build in 1859/1860 and regulates the level of the lake even today through the careful removal and placement of the so-called “needles” or wooden posts. From here we walked back a bit into the town on the opposite side of the river from where we have spent the majority of our time to see the 13th century Franciscan Church, the Ritterschur Palace, which was built for Luzern’s Mayor in 1557 as his private residence, and the riverfront Jesuit Church. We then walked back over the river for a third time this time on a modern pedestrian bridge and viewed some of the lovely fresco painted buildings that were once part of the “Old City Squares” before walking by the Town Hall, which was built between 1602 and 1606 and back across the Chapel Bridge to make our way to the train station.
We left Luzern around 2:30 in the afternoon and upon our arrival back in Zurich we took the tram back to our hotel to catch the afternoon soccer match before heading in to explore Zurich.
After our rest and the soccer match we hopped back on a tram towards the center of Zurich. We had been told by the hotel staff that we could take Tram 2 all the way down to the lake front, so we were a bit confused when the Tram terminated a couple of stops prior to where we had intended to be. But from the map it didn’t look like we had far to go, so we thought nothing more of it. As we walked towards the 13th century Fraumünster Cathedral it became clear why the tram had stopped early. The streets up and down the river front all the way to the lake were packet with stalls selling goods/food/drinks, carnival games, rides, and more. As we continued down towards the lake front we saw a sign that said, well I assume it said, Zurich Fest 2010. What luck! We quickly forgot about seeing any sights, although I don’t believe we missed much more than a few churches and heaven knows we have seen plenty of those on this trip thus far, and grabbed a couple drinks and joined in on the festivities. They had a skiing show on the lake front, followed by an air show (and later another air show) which was heaven for Tim, a wakeboarding show in the river, and bands galore. We grabbed dinner from a stall, and just walked around enjoying the chaos until we finally made our way to where they had a big screen playing the evening soccer match. We stayed and watched through the 1st half before making our way back through the crowds to catch the tram back to our hotel. It was a surprising and amazing evening in Zurich!
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