No credit here with my camera – no, my friend Darlene took this picture, and isn’t it stunning? That’s looking across the lake, at the city of Lucerne. Obviously spring was in full bloom, grass was greening, and it was COLD. In the sun, that day, it wasn’t bad at all, but in the shade you knew it was in the 40s.

To backtrack just a bit, after leaving Matera, in southern Italy, Joan, Tom and their granddaughter Lauren and I drove back to Rome. Tom turned in the rental car and we all stayed at the Hilton Hotel at the Fiumicino Rome airport. It’s literally steps from the terminal. All my devices got charged, I had a first class shower, I rearranged my packing system to put colder-weather clothing at the top. I put on my Land’s End thermal undershirt, my vest and carried my raincoat. The next morning Joan and I (on different Swiss Air flights) flew from Rome to Zurich. Tom & Lauren flew home. I was the last one to arrive in Zurich – Darlene had flown from the U.S. the day before to get a leg up on jet lag, and Cherrie flew in that morning. We all met, by plan, at the Europcar rental counter. It was like a family reunion – we were all so happy to be there and all very excited about our next 2 weeks together.

After we got the GPS working correctly (in English), I input our destination (Lucerne) and off we went. I didn’t put this little bit of advice in my whole post about travel recommendations, but I can’t encourage you enough, get a GPS (hopefully one that’s built-in, not a portable one) in your rental car. It makes SUCH a difference, no matter the cost. As a little side note, I’ll just tell you that all the brochures in our Audi station wagon were in German. No English or Italian, so the booklets were useless to us all!

I’m quite good with navigating and I have a good sense of direction, but in a foreign country, with German signs, not so much! Darlene was the right seat navigator, and she did a great job – she saved our bacon several times noticing some tiny little sign directing us to our hotels.

The first thing I did was program the GPS to NOT go on toll roads and the autobahn. Two reasons: (1) the most beautiful scenery in Switzerland is in the towns and villages and in the country side, not on the freeways; (2) Switzerland charges a flat fee for using the autobahn – for visitors it’s something like $30-40 for a month’s pass. Not that we couldn’t have paid it, but why? We were there to see the countryside. We aren’t sure, but we think we actually ended up on the autobahn a couple of times – but it was only for one exit’s worth. We don’t know whether there wasn’t any other way, or if we made a mistake. The GPS routed us that way, so we just took the chance.

Planning this 6-day portion of our trip was my job. We did: Zurich to Lucerne to Brienz to Lauterbrunnen, to Gruyere and to Talloires (actually in France, but it’s very close to Geneva).

There’s the 4 of us – from the left: Joan, Cherrie, me, and Darlene standing on the river quay with the famous Chapel Bridge behind us.

I did the driving in Switzerland, with the exception of about 15-20 minutes worth one day when I wasn’t feeling very good. Joan drove for that short distance. I’m fine with driving in foreign countries. I’m fine with driving in countries that drive on the opposite side of the road. Dave and I did many trips to the British Isles, and we learned to coach each other with turns, lane changes, roundabouts, and such. Switzerland has adopted the roundabout in a big way – on some of the small highways we encountered them about every 300 feet it seemed like. But we definitely saw the countryside in all its beauty. It was a warmer spring than usual, so the spring flowers were sprouting, grass was the brilliant green I remember from previous trips, the trees were budding except at the higher elevations, yet the mountains were still draped in snow.

The drive from the Zurich airport to Lucerne is about an hour, but since we used back roads (and made a wrong turn or two – I was far from perfect even with the GPS) it took us a couple of hours to get there. But it was beautiful, and everywhere we looked we could see high snow-capped peaks, and take in the beautiful 2-story typical Swiss homes. Nobody had any window boxes out yet – such a regular sighting all over Switzerland in the spring and summer – homeowners take great pride in having the brightest and most colorful flowers hung from their upstairs windows.

Approaching Lucerne, my hands gripped the steering wheel – I was tense, I’ll admit. But the GPS routed us well, even displaying which lane we needed to be in (a real help in cities). She didn’t always do that, but when she did, I was very grateful! Had I not printed out the directions from the hotel’s website, I don’t think we’d have ever found out how to get to our hotel. We had to drive across the river from the hotel, down the main street, make a tiny little turn into what looked like an alley, zigzag through a couple of little streets, then approach a very narrow 2-lane bridge that went back into the old city (which is generally closed to car traffic) that has very glaring sign saying no entry. But there was a little sign (Darlene, bless her heart, saw it when nobody else did) saying if you’re staying at Hotel des Balances, you are allowed entry. She got us right to the door. We hefted our bags out, checked in and a very kind young man took our car off to some parking garage. Of course, that was extra, but it was worth every single penny!

We were all a little frazzled (hopefully not from my driving, but just general fatigue from all of us flying in, finding one another, the stress of getting situated in the car with our bags – tight – driving in the busy traffic of Zurich, trying to recognize different road signs from our own U.S. signs, hoping we weren’t doing anything wrong). Once we got to the hotel we all wanted to take a little rest. Cherrie was in serious jet lag, having just arrived that morning, and having had no sleep for about 20 hours or so. We decided to meet for an early drink in the lovely bar at the hotel. I’d wanted us to stay at the Hotel Gutsch (in picture above, up on the small mountain top – you get to it by a funicular (although you can drive to it from the back side of the hill). But alas, it was just too expensive for our economy-minded foursome. But we were very happy with where I did book us – at the Hotel des Balances, which is right ON the river, has a gorgeous view, with rooms facing the river (more expensive) or the interior (all of us) which overlooked the cute old town walking streets. We were all giddy with excitement that evening. The bartender was very funny, young, and he flirted with all of us. He made lots of points with all of us old ladies! The hotel offered a free welcome cocktail – I don’t remember now what it was, but it was good and we enjoyed it. See picture down below of us all with our cocktails in hand. We had lunch the next day at one of the quayside restaurants (they’re literally one right after another), and Cherrie ordered risotto (picture at left), one of her favorite things. I think most of us took a sample – wow, it was good with peas and fresh asparagus.

Since I’d been to Lucerne 3-4 times before, I decided that since this was Easter Sunday, we should have a celebration dinner. I’d made reservations months before for that night at the Old Swiss House, a venerable establishment in Lucerne (spelled Luzern there, and pronounced loo-ZEHRN). This was my third visit to the restaurant and it was only about 10-11 blocks’ walk from our hotel. It took a little bit of looking to find it, but we did. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner there, with Cherrie and me ordering the dish that the restaurant is most famous for, their breaded veal.

They dip the thinly pounded veal into an egg bath, then into bread crumbs and into a hot sizzling pan right at the tableside. Can I just tell you that to make two plates of those (right) the server/chef used almost a whole cube of butter. First some to brown the veal, then more to brown the 2nd side, then more to toast and brown the additional bread crumbs, then a bit more to lubricate the spaghetti. Oh my, was it good! I couldn’t finish it. And yes, it was ridiculously expensive, but veal just is. It was a special evening.

After a good night’s sleep we got up and out – we took a ferry ride around part of Lake Lucerne. I’d told everyone that it’s worth doing, and since the weather was picture-perfect, we boarded one of the numerous ferries and went to 2-3 different quays, then returned. We got off at one of the places and walked around a little bit. Darlene snapped the top photo there. Cherrie and I found a wonderful bench, in the sunshine and visited, while Joan and Darlene went hiking all over the little town.

Once back in Lucerne, we collected our luggage, the sweet little man brought our car around and we started off on our next adventure. First I programmed the GPS, and off we went.

Our destination was Lake Brienz. It was breathtaking, and  you’ll see why when you read my next post.

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