FEBRUARY 2020
Hielke and I visited Lucerne and Mount Pilatus as a day trip from Basel. The Swiss rail is a super efficient way to see more of Switzerland and the trip from Basel to Lucerne only took us 70 minutes. Lucerne is a beautiful city, located at Lake Lucerne and the base of the Swiss Alps. In the city centre you will find the “Kapellbrücke”, which is the oldest wooden covered bridge in the world. From Lucerne you can also bring a quick visit to the Swiss Alps, we took the gondola to Mount Pilatus for stunning views over the area.
Historical City Center
As you probably know by now, one of my favorite activities is to stroll through an old city center. Lucerne has a wonderfully clean historical city center, so visiting this city was right up my alley. The river Reuss flows through the heart of the city, which creates beautiful river banks. If you take a stroll over these banks you get the best views of the Kapellbrücke. The Kapellbrücke is the oldest wooden covered bridge in the world and is the famous sight of Lucerne. On the inside you can find paintings dating back to the 17th Century, but unfortunately these were covered by carnival preparations when we visited. Lucerne also offers many cultural sights, such as art museums, but we decided to enjoy the city for wandering around and to have some drinks, and do a short trip to the Swiss Alps instead.
Mount Pilatus
From the city center of Lucern you can bring an easy visit to Mount Pilatus. You can take a bus to the gondola entry, which is located just outside of the city center. Unfortunately we did not do that, we took the train to Alpnachstad and hoped to take the steepest cogwheel railway in the world, but we discovered that it was closed when we arrived. We therefore had to head back to Lucerne, to take the bus to the gondola instead.
As you may have already noted we did not come very prepared for our visit to Mount Pilatus. So we didn’t know that you could hire toboggans at the second station of the gondola and we didn’t bring the right clothes to do so. The second station is called Fräkmüntegg and you can find a nice restaurant here, with decent prices and a good view over the Alps. From Fräkmüntegg you can take a large gondola to the top of Mount Pilatus. We paid about 57 CHF for a roundtrip (about € 55) from Lucerne, which we found incredibly expensive. I later discovered that this was a special winter discount and that the tickets usually cost 72 CHF, so be prepared for this stellar price. I honestly expected a roundtrip to cost about € 25, so if we would have known beforehand we probably would not have done this activity on our daytrip.
This doesn’t take away that the activity in itself was super fun! The views of Lake Lucerne and its surroundings were absolutely breathtaking and we loved breathing in the fresh air of the Swiss Alps. The top station of the gondola looked liked a scene from a James Bond movie, so it was definitely really spectacular. You can check out the pictures and decided for yourself whether you want to pay the high price for these views. You can also visit Mount Pilatus in a budget way and take a hike up. The last part was fully covered in snow and looked extremely rough, but it actually seemed like a good activity for summertime! The hike up and down will approximately take 7,5 hours. I have researched this hike and the pictures look amazing and maybe sometime we will get back here and actually do this hike!
Geweldig mooi weer …gr.