Day 7: we spent the morning & afternoon enjoying Lake Lucerne and Mount Pilatus. We had the evening off and was pleasantly surprised to find out that the last weekend in June the town holds a music festival.
Favorite Photo for this post.
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| The Music festival in Lucerne - the last weekend in June |
My husband and I were out strolling around Lucerne trying to figure out what we wanted to eat and where we wanted to go. When all of sudden we heard some music and saw people migrating toward this one road. So we followed the crowd and was not expecting to see a parade go by.
It sure was fun to see and it sure did capture the feel for the evening - people just out to listen to music and have a good time. We quickly figured out that this was the parade that was used to open up the festival and to let the music begin.
The leader of the parade stopping so others could catch up with him.
And here they came. They were so loud the streets vibrated with their music. I should have recorded this but didn't think about it at the time.
This car came last and we figured it must of held some of the town elders in it.
The parade was just one of the many different things we saw and did that evening.
Here's some of the other things:
Lucerne is famous for its bridges that cross the Reuss River. The chapel bridge is the most famous one. One of the things that make the Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrucke) and the Mill Bridge (Spreuerbrucke) so well known is the fact that they were built in the 1400's and they have paintings hanging above as you walk along. In the Chapel bridge there was a fire that destroyed part of the bridge and some of them but they went ahead and rebuilt the bridge and replaced some of them that they had images for them, but in the Mill bridge they still had the original ones there.
THE MILL BRIDGE
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| The Mill Bridge, Lucerne Switzerland |
Upriver view from the Mill bridge.
This looked like a lock and dam system that let boat go down the river without going through some pretty swift currents on the other side this was also just upriver of the Mill bridge.
The upriver view from the Mill bridge.
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| View from the Mill Bridge, Lucerne |
The view down river of the Mill bridge.
I was surprised to see this shrine on the bridge because it definitely had religious overtones to it. I thought I would have called this the chapel bridge and the other one the tower bridge;
a closeup of the shrine area.
Artwork on the Mill bridge.
More images from the Mill bridge. Not the best but you can see how they were one right after another and there was a different image on each side.
It was hard getting good photo's of the art because the lighting wasn't the best and there were way to many of them to get all of them but they truly were special works of art and worth taking the time to look at. There are whole stories being told in them but it was all in Swiss and we couldn't tell what they were saying.
This is how the Mill bridge looked from the western bank of the river.
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| The Mill bridge, Lucerne |
There were pedestrian bridges too that weren't as fancy as the other bridges. This was the Reuss bridge.
This is the same bridge but just the other side of it. I thought the building to the right was so pretty to see.
THE CHAPEL BRIDGE
The Chapel Bridge is the most famous one mainly because its the bridge you first see as you exit the train station or the ferries and that is how most of the people coming to Lucerne see it. With its distinctive tower its hard to miss and is pretty much used as the image to represent the city.
I like this one because you can see Mount Pilatus in the background.
Notice how there is a bend in the bridge? And if you look closely you cans see flowers all along the walls of the bridge.
Here's a closer view of them. Needless to say the flowers on the bridge were so pretty.
This is actually taken from the bridge and used a lot in pictures of the area.
Some of the Art work on this bridge.
The up river view. It was fun seeing these people canoeing on it.
The view from it. Look at all those swans. People like to feed the swans from the bridge and they know it so they all like to hang around it for a free meal.
One of the things we were told was that the walls facing the lake were higher because that is were they would expect attacks to come from. Because it has a narrower viewing area it was hard to get a picture without the eves in it. On the other side the space was wider and it wasn't as much of a problem.
We did walk around the section of town that was called the Old Town. It was easy to tell what was the old town because most of the roads were cobbled and the roads were narrow. But there was another way you could tell and that was there was a wall that sectioned it off too. We did some walking along it just to see what was inclosed in the old town.
THE OLD CITY WALL
The other thing that impressed me with Lucerne was its age and the fact that it had a wall built around it. It reminded me so much of medevil times.
The towers each had names but I couldn't always tell which was which - I think this was the Schirmerturm.
Just look at how thick that wall is.
Another perspective as to how thick the wall was.
Another of the wall towers.
Here's looking at a couple of the towers from the otherside of the River Reuess bank. Notice how they stick up above the city and gave such a great view of it.
MISCELLANEOUS IMPRESSIONS:
Other things that I liked as I walked along. In random order of things..
I liked seeing the carvings on this building.
Looking upriver the Reuss river to the Jesuit Church. The building with the two green tops.
The promenade that was was along the lake shore and where our hotel and others were located. This area had once been swamp and they built it up and then built these building on top of the built up area. I was surprised they would be so close to the lake shore but I figured flooding must not be a problem in this area since the building were mostly built back in the 1800's.
The view from out room looking toward Mount Rigi area.
Looking in the opposite direction toward Mount Pilatus. What got to me was how different the mountains would look with different lighting on them and the amount of cloud cover that was present.
a couple of hours later with the clouds going away.
Actually getting to see the top of Mount Pilatus from our hotel room
Look at how clear the water is and how you can see this swans feet in the water.
Look at how grey looking this swan was. Made me wonder how old it was.
We went and saw the dying lion again. Its such a powerful monument.
Today there were so many more people. I know its because of the music festival. But it seemed like everywhere you looked there were people.
It had a lot of unique buildings and I couldn't tell if this was a church or something else.
They said this was a hotel that was for sale its called Gutsch Castle.
The Cathedral
People listing to a band play while others were getting food to eat. In the center you can see a teal green background with the guitarist playing in front of it. What was so fun was there were all different stages set up throughout the city and different groups were playing different things. So in one place may be traditional music and the next may have jazz or rock and roll. A lot of the musicians were singing songs in English which made recognizable to us and they were a lot of the old's but goodies rock and roll.
Moving down the boulevard to another stage. Only this time nothing was playing and they were waiting on the group to finish setting up.
A lot of people brought there boats into town for the music.
A different angle of the Cathedral.
Another view of mount Pilatus and the lakefront.
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| The Jesuit Church, Lucerne Switzerland |
Outside the Jesuit Church I just liked the street lamps there.
The swan's lining up to get feed.
I really liked seeing all the stucco work and the paintings on the buildings.
And back to more music.
It was so nice to go back to our room and then to be able to listen to the music through our windows. They played until about midnight. I was glad they didn't play too late into the night. You just don't get days like that very often.
Would you believe there is still more to come? Tomorrow is the last day but oh what a day it was- it even went out with a big bang. How about that for a fitting ending.
PS: I do want to thank the group that took us on this awesome adventure
and all the wonderful people we got to know while going on it. You
know who you are - THANK YOU.
I also want to thank my husband for sharing this special time with me and making it all possible.
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