As we continued north we made our way to Lucerne, Switzerland. The Swiss culture was very different from their Italian neighbors to the south. The city was extremely clean and orderly. Traffic flowed smoothly, and always had an obvious order to it. The signage was all very simple and easy to follow; despite not speaking the language. The entire town of Lucerne sat on a lake and was surrounded by The Alps. Everywhere you looked, the view was impossible to take in.
We spent the first day just walking around the city, and seeing the main sights. We stood in awe at the giant crying lion statue memorial, got lost in old town, and walked across the Chapel Bridge. The Bridge has an interesting curve as it crosses the lake, and has paintings lining the inside. Unfortunately a fire burned a considerable amount of the paintings in 1993, but luckily a few of them were salvaged.
The next day, we decided to try and climb one of the nearby mountains, Mt Rigi. There was a trail called the ‘Mark Twain Trail’, because Mark Twain himself walked it in the 1870s, and wrote about it in his book A Tramp Abroad. We crossed the lake in a boat, and set out to conquer this 5,900ft mountain on Mark Twain’s trail that culminated at ‘Rigi Kulm’. Victoria was determined that we could do this. I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t quite convinced that we were fully prepared for this type of activity – but we set out up the mountain through winding trails and up steep inclines anyway.
As we climbed higher the sound of cowbells ringing began to cover the mountain. We even passed through a few small pastures full of cattle. There was a small cafe and hotel with a great view. And there was Felsentor, a huge natural archway.
Each time the tree line would break we would get a preview of what awaited us at the top, but the sun was getting low, and our last boat to get back to Lucerne was not willing to wait. We got to the last checkpoint before reaching the top, and had to decide: do we take the train car to the top from here, or do we race the clock and get to the peak with 20 minutes to spare before our last train down. We had come too far to give up now, and decided to push through. The distance meant very little to no breaks on the last hour up the mountain. At this point we had switched roles – Victoria was very apprehensive of making to the top within the hour. We were both extremely tired as we had already been climbing 5 hours. But this time, I knew we could do it and we pushed through.
Words fail me to not just express the 360 degree view from the top, but the feeling of standing on the tallest point of a mountain after a very difficult day of climbing and pushing ourselves.
We had 20 minutes to snap a few ‘cool adventurer people’ pics, and catch our train back down the mountain. What an incredible day! What an incredible world!