Day 8: Engelberg & Luzern

Hot chocolate (NOT Swiss Miss)!

I'm a little sad that our visit to Switzerland has to be so short. It is often said of Switzerland that the Swiss just sit back and let other people do things, that nothing ever happens in this corner of the alps. After all, Albert Einstein came to Switzerland to escape the militarism and intensity of Germany. I personally believe that doctors should be able to prescribe a Swiss vacation for patients suffering from stress and overwork (I guess that would be the entire United States). The alpine air is wonderful stuff for sleeping. The intensely green landscape is enough to melt away even the toughest stress. There is nothing like waking up to a breakfast that includes ingredients that are so local that the cheese has the picture of the dairy farmer who made sitting next to the serving plate. That is the kind of place that Switzerland is.

Fearless!

After that breakfast, we embarked on our most adventurous day trip yet. We climbed aboard three different cable cars to make the ascent to the top of Mt. Titlis, 10,000 feet in altitude. The first cable car was a pretty standard affair, a little six-passenger bubble that took us straight up to the second station on the mountain. The second cable car was more like a city bus. It held 80 passengers and took us to the third station. The final cable car was the most impressive. It was shaped like a giant hockey puck and rotated as it made its way up the final stretch to the top, giving everybody a fantastic 360-view. This was definitely not easy going for those who are afraid of heights, especially when the cars started swinging a little as we crossed each tower.

Is this the line for the Matterhorn?

Once we reached the top, we made a visit to a glacier cave. This was quite an amazing, if a little frigid, experience. I expected to see Darth Vader come swaggering around a corner followed by a squad of snowtroopers. If you know what I am talking about, then I congratulate you on being as big nerd as me. Back to the stuff that matters. We also had the opportunity to walk out onto the glacier itself. The summer temperature at the top was a balmy 0 degrees Celsius. For those of you who don't follow the metric system, that's the freezing point of water. The wind came howling across the summit, pushing the clouds at incredible speeds. Forty-five minutes and three cable cars later we were back in Engelberg, where the weather was 77 degrees and sunny.

Beautiful Luzern

Another 45 minues brought us down out of the mountains to the lakeside city of Luzern. Luzern is an ancient and very important town on the lake. Luzern sits at the mouth of the river that empties the lake into the lower elevations. The people of Luzern are responsible for regulating the flow of the water out of the lake in order to control its level. When the snow melts in the spring they open up the gates a bit more in order to prevent the towns that dot the lakeshore from flooding. Today, Luzern is a relatively sleepy little city (nothing like Paris or London). For me, it's the perfect place to have a little picnic next to the lake, and to buy a sweet Swiss Army knife and some chocolate.

 

Posted with Blogsy