Day 10 - Making up for lost time
I think it was bacon. Whatever it was, I woke up this morning feeling much better but still a little off. No matter, though, as we had a full day planned.
We woke up at the "normal" cruise wake up time, which was early for us now off-ship without the incentive of an excursion call time tempting us. No breakfast today, we grabbed some (more) apples, some Nespresso, and hoofed it to the train station. Today we were Alp-ing.
Except we didn't take a train, instead we took a ferry! The plan was to take a ferry to Vitznau, catch a cog railway train up to Rigi Mountain, a peak on the Alps that overlooks Lucerne. Tickets were again discounted due to the half fare tickets (these are truly paying off). Its insane how tied together all the transit systems are. We got to the train/ferry station with time to spare, so we got some pastries and coffee. Lauren got a cinnamon roll and was very happy. We sat on the top deck and admired the view.
Sunrise was at like 8 and the ferry was at 9. We splurged on first class, which has its own restaurant (with a really dense menu) so we really didnt need to get coffee at the train station.
When to got into Vitznau, it was a little chaotic as there were Chinese tour groups and Viking tour groups all trying to get on the train. There was a very cool roundhouse and workshop with a bunch of historical rolling stock, but we had no time to look at it without missing the train and not getting seats.
The train ride was very worth it and it even had a cute song with yodeling (we cannot find the song online). The grade it only in the 40% range but was still very steep.
And wowza, was the view stunning once we got off the train:
Very Alp-y. On our way out of the hotel this morning, we were in the elevator with another (older) American couple. And if an older American couple is in the elevator, they're going to make conversation. So yeah, they asked us where we were going and we said Rigi. They went yesterday and told us it would be life changing. We aren't sure about life changing, but definitely very amazing and breathtaking.
The mountain is very tourist friendly and had a bunch of prepared hikes. We took a 3 mile hike around the top of the mountain, and even made a wrong turn that almost took us way down the mountain! Lauren found a lot of good conglomerate. The hike was very steep in some spots (especially the wrong turn we made), and with the elevation and slippery snow, it took us a long time and a lot of effort. Plus, I was still a little queasy. Luckily we packed a small lunch (apples, wine, and biscoff cookies from our flights lol) and ate at the very top of Rigi.
You can tell the hike was steep because Lauren took off her jacket :P
We took a separate railroad down the mountain that used more historical train cars. This was fun because we sat up front and watched the whole way down from the engineer's point of view.
Then we took the normal train back to Lucerne, which only took 20 minutes and was super smooth! In Lucerne we started our city tour that we couldn't do yesterday. Upon doing so, we encountered a surprise Christmas market. Well it turns out there's actually like 8 or 10 Christmas Markets, and 17 total Christmas "points of interest" in Lucerne through December. A lot of them come and go, we saw the handmade crafts market and international markets this weekend, and they have both since closed 😦 Anyways, yes, this new unexpected market also had mugs. I think we're about gluhwine'd out. But not Christmas'd out because we still went to the other markets after (but got beer instead of gluhwine).
We ended the day going back to the main Christmas Markets to do some more shopping and get gyros. They had haloumi gyros here (there's a big focus on sustainability, vegetarian, vegan, and alcohol-free alcohol here) and Lauren was craving it. Luckily it hit the spot. After that, we headed back to the hotel, but stopped at the Christmas Tree market.
Our final acts for the day were to use out outdoor hot tub (which wasnt very hot because it was so cold outside), then hit the bar. The bar is supposedly very fancy and has been packed every time we pass by it. But today it was empty and we were the only ones there. No idea.
Tomorrow we are going to try to go to the Interlaken Christmas Market and kill time by hiking Kleine Scheidegg. We really wanted to go to Schilthorn but its closed for renovations (half of Switzerland feels like its closed for renovations, even Lucerne is covered in craned and scaffolds.)
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