Becky and I decided not to join any of the excursions today and explored Lucerne by ourselves instead. We spent the morning on a 3 hour cruise on lake Lucerne.
Arriving back in town, went across the chapel bridge and took a quick look inside the Jesuit church where I managed to miss a step and end up on my bum. Becky thought it was hilarious.
We had crepes for lunch and did some shopping in the chocolate shops before heading back to the hotel for our farewell meal. I don't have any photos of the meal because I decided not to take the tablet with me and just enjoy the company of the lovely people we've met on this trip instead.
This morning we left Geneva and headed to Lucerne on the Golden Pass Express train. Due to technical difficulties we had to change trains in Lausanne before stopping at Interlaken for lunch. It was a cloudy, rainy day, so there were no good photos of the Eiger or the Jungfrau to be had. This was the best photo we managed to get.
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Due to a landslide the train line from Lausanne was out, so we had to continue our journey to Lucerne by coach, where we saw the famous lion.
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After a brief stop at the hotel to check in and change, we headed out for our yodeling evening at Stadkeller.
We had cheese fondue as a starter, rosti as a main course and chocolate fondue for dessert. All the traditional Swiss dishes in one meal, and that's not mentioning the beer.
The company and entertainment were great and we got to watch our friends Nancy and Mohan blowing the alpine horn and yodeling.
We left Zermatt this morning and took a series of trains across the countryside to the French speaking part of Switzerland and on into Geneva. As a child I used to watch a TV show called "The Champions" about a group of agents with special powers who were based in Geneva. The starting sequence showed them standing in front of the Jet D'Eau fountain in Lake Geneva. So I've always wanted to see it.
A fascinating fact about Lake Geneva is that although it's the largest body of water in the Alps, it's not the largest lake in Switzerland because a lot of Lake Geneva is actually in France.
Geneva has a strong UN presence and is also home to the headquarters of many international organizations such as the WHO, WTO, the Red Cross, etc. It's also worth noting that the symbol of the Red Cross is the Swiss flag with the colours reversed. We took a short tour of the city by bus before being dropped off at our hotel for our evening dinner cruise on the lake.
There are many impressive multi-million dollar homes along the lakeside belonging to people like Roger Federer.
We sailed into French waters during the evening and by the time we came back it was dark so I got to see the Jet D'Eau lit up as well
After an amazing morning up at 10000ft we spent the afternoon exploring Zermatt. It's a small town but very pretty.
We had lunch at a traditional Swiss restaurant. Raclette as a starter followed by rosti for my main course. It was a lovely meal.
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The town is closed to almost all vehicles with the exception of horse carriages and small electric "taxis" with a top speed of 20kph.
Even the police are restricted to an electric vehicle and I'm sure a thief who was fit enough could outrun them on foot.
We did a lot of shopping and took in the highlights, including the church, climbers' graveyard, etc.
After an exhausting day we spent the evening having a drink in the hotel bar before heading to bed for an early night. It's another 6.30am start tomorrow to head for the train station and on to Geneva.
This morning we took the cog railway up Gornergrat to over 10000ft.
This was above the level of the low lying clouds so we got some spectacular views of the Alps. Including some impressive glaciers.
There were also some amazing views of the Matterhorn.
But I think this one is my favourite...
We checked out of the Reine Victoria hotel in St Moritz this morning. I didn't say much about St Moritz or the hotel yesterday. St Moritz is a beautiful town but obviously very upmarket and aimed at the super rich. St Moritz has been home to the winter Olympics twice: in 1928 and 1948. It has the oldest bobsleigh track in the world (opened in 1908). It is also the only natural ice track in the world - all the others are artificially iced. For the bargain price of 270 Swiss Francs, 2 guests can go down it in a 4 man Bob with an experienced driver and brake man. There wasn't time to do it even if I'd had the nerve. It has to be booked well in advance.
After breakfast we checked out of our grand old hotel that we had been very impressed with and boarded the Glacier Express to Zermatt. The Glacier Express is a very posh train with a glass roof. Unforunately, the weather was a bit wet and much of the journey was cloudy so we didn't have views quite as good as yesterday. However, we were treated to a very nice 3 course lunch as well as tea and cookies during the 8 hour journey.
We arrived in Zermatt at about 6.30pm and had a snack for supper before walking through the picturesque old town to a point where we could get a nice picture of the Matterhorn.
This morning we left Fawlty Towers Hotel behind and took a series of trains to St Moritz. First it was a short trip from the train station at the airport to Zurich HB (Zurich central station). Then from Zurich to Chur and then a change onto our final train into St Mortiz where we had lunch alongside the lake.
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I've decided to rename our hotel from the Mövenpick Zurich airport to the Mövenpick Fawlty Towers. Today we met some of the people in our tour group and none of them had a good word to say about the hotel. I had complained yesterday that our room hadn't been serviced. Some of our tour group were left without any toilet roll after their rooms were "serviced" and others had been left with only a single hand towel in the bathroom. It turns out that nobody's AC is working, but we are glad we didn't complain about it. Those who did call maintenance had to wait hours for anyone to turn up, then the maintenance person would pull the whole unit out of the wall and just disappear. Given that it's not working in the entire building I think it's safe to say that the problem isn't going to be in the equipment that's in the room anyway. We can count ourselves lucky that at least we got a room to ourselves as several people were given keys to rooms that were already occupied when they opened the door and walked in, or, alternatively were unpacking when some strangers would walk in on them. There only seems to be one power socket in each room and that's in the bathroom. Someone was complaining that they'd had to put their kettle in the bathroom to make tea. Well at least they could reach their kettle. Our tea and coffee tray with the kettle and cups on it has been placed at the very top of our closet - well out of the reach of either me or Becky. The final straw is that nobody's card key seems to work for more than an hour and reception is full of a continuous stream of people trying to get their card keys reset.
Anyway, enough about the hotel as we're leaving it tomorrow. This afternoon we all congregated in reception to meet our tour guide, Ellen. Then it was onto the coach for a short tour of Zurich on coach and foot.
The large church with the 2 towers is called the Grosse Munster. The story goes that Charlemagne was riding past this spot when his horse tripped over a gravestone and came a cropper. Charlemagne was unhurt and founded the church in thanks for his survival.
We walked around the cobbled streets in the centre and saw many old buildings. Although few shops were open as it's Sunday.
Many of the buildings are former Guild buildings and several have animal motifs on them representing the Guild that owned the building. The wine Guild had a camel on it for some reason. Meanwhile the building below had a red bull, so that must have been the Guild for energy drinks.
After our walking tour we were taken to a local restaurant for a very nice welcome dinner and met some nice people from Australia and Singapore.
Tomorrow we have to be up at 6am to put our cases out for the porters and we will be traveling over the Bernina Pass to St Moritz.
Last night we'd taken a short walk from the hotel to find the Tram station, with the intent of taking the tram into the centre of Zurich today. So it was a bit of a shock when we walked over to the tram station this morning only to find they were doing maintenance on the line over the weekend and the tram station was out of service.
Not to be put off, we took the hotel shuttle to the airport and bought a 24 hour "Zurich card". This allows travel on ALL forms of public transport in Zurich (which includes boats across Lake Zurich and even the cable cars!). We then took the train to the main station and walked from there down to the lakefront doing a bit of souvenir shopping along the way.
We then used our travel cards to take a short cruise on Lake Zurich.
We were able to conveniently disembark the cruise ship at a stop near the Lindt Home of Chocolate museum. We had to wait for our tour, so in the meantime we decided to go in the cafe and have hot chocolates and slices of white chocolate cheesecake.
And yes, this is a real chocolate fountain in the foyer......
Unfortunately, it's been a bit of a stressful day where nothing much has gone right. We were up early to make our way over to Terminal 5 to catch our flight to Zurich. The plane was delayed and we were about an hour late taking off. So it's a good thing Zurich was our final destination and we didn't have a connection to make.
On arrival at Zurich Airport it transpired that the Hotel shuttle for the Movenpick hotel that we'd been booked into did not run between the hours of noon and 4pm. That's a heck of a long lunch break! So we had to get a taxi to the hotel.
Our problems didn't end there, as when we arrived at reception and showed them our booking from Trafalgar they insisted we had no booking and we weren't on their list of people on the Trafalgar tour. We had to contact the Trafalgar helpline and get them to talk to the hotel. Finally, after over an hour we were allowed to check in. The AC in the room doesn't work (and it's really hot here), they aren't servicing the rooms daily and our room keys stopped working by the following day even though we're here for 3 nights. All in all I'm not impressed with Movenpick and my feedback to Trafalgar will be that they should use a different hotel for their tours.
By the time we'd been allowed to check in and we'd had a shower it was early evening. So we spent a couple of hours in the hotel bar having a meal and a well earned cocktail.
I wouldn't have expected it, but smoking seems to be quite popular here in Switzerland. As well as there being a huge smoking terrace outside the hotel, there was a cigarette machine in the foyer. I haven't seen one of these in years.
