The end of the line

Trip Start Jun 27, 2009
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Trip End Jul 13, 2009


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Flag of Switzerland  , Lucerne,
Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Lake Lucerne is a lovely town. Tauck arraigned a walking tour of the old town. In 1330, the Chapel Bridge was built as a defensive bridge. On the rafters are paintings that were, at that time, our equivalent of a sponsor. Prominent families or guilds would pay and have their painting hung. The paintings were there for 400 years and then 100 years ago, there was concern about damage and they were replaced with copies and the original removed. In 1993, a fire destroyed part of the bridge. It was rebuilt and the town wanted the originals put back up, as the copies had turned pink! No one knew where they were, though, but they were finally found in one of the old guard towers and replaced in the bridge's rafters.

The Jesuits built a church near the end of the bridge. Rococo in style, it is a beautiful church, with pastel colors. The marble pillars that you will see when I am able to post some pictures aren’t really marble—they are stucco, made to look like marble Chapel Bridge
Chapel Bridge
 . As we continued our tour we saw Mint Alley, where coins were first printed in Lucerne and many guild buildings – building painted on the outside to let people know what business was there. The theater guild had masks on theirs.

After lunch, we went and saw a few of the things that the guide didn’t show us and then did some shopping. We had to be ready for a 5 PM lake cruise to a hotel across the water for dinner.  It was a little rainy, but we saw Mt.Pilatus and some very lovely homes. Dinner was good and the hotel had a man who entertained us by playing the accordion. He even played the Anniversary Waltz since it was our anniversary. The boat ride back was shorter (since we did a direct route) and I got some lovely sunset pictures.

I will upload pictures and maybe add some more text when I can. For those of you who don’t know, we are now in Paris until Monday the 13th. We were hoping to surprise Elizabeth by just walking to baggage claim instead of going on a connecting flight for home, but she saw the flight schedule a few days into the trip and, although it was a surprise, she had advance notice.
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