Since the Transport Museum was so awesome it got its own post – here is the rest of the skinny on Luzern.

Our hotel had a great location right on the river.  (but I don’t think I’d recommend the hotel…) 

 The river is lovely, we ate at a restaurant right along it on our first evening in town.

On our afternoon in Luzern we split up.   As you read Steve hit up the Paul Klee museum.  I wanted to do some shopping, and as this was our only planned city stop this seemed like the right place.  But, alas, everything in Switzerland is mega-expensive and not really any different from what you can get in England – and since I wasn’t in the market for a pocket knife or expensive watch it was mostly window shopping then back to the hotel for a nap.

Then he visited the medieval city wall and towers, still partially encircling the centre of the city…

We walked over to see the lion that everyone talks about before getting dinner.  The lion is actually quite beautiful and moving, probably hard to enjoy when there are hordes of tourists, but worth a quick stop if you’re in the neighborhood.

Overall Luzern is a nice small city, but I don’t think it really represents what is so uniquely enjoyable about Switzerland.  I’d recommend spending one day there – focusing on the Transport museum and then moving along.

Yesterday we took our friend Margery for a day out to Hampton Court Palace.  The trip was in honor of her 90th birthday last month.  She is a very spry little lady for 90 and we had a great time.

(Margery shown actual size)

Hampton Court Palace was the favourite of King Henry VIII (the one with all the wives).  It was large enough to accomodate the 1000 people who made up his court.  It has an interesting history, being built by Cardinal Wolsey who had to give it to the king (because he wasn’t bright enough to figure out before hand that the king wouldn’t like a subject having the best house in the land).

On a tip from Wendy we got there right at 10am as they opened up.  We had the place to ourselves for the first hour and a half – which was wonderful to enjoy many of the large rooms as the only visitors.  It never did get crowded – making it a pleasant place to visit overall.  One of the advantages of taking your elderly friends with you is you get to take the lift!  HCP is organized so that you tour the various sets of apartments – which requires going between the ground and 1st floors many times, but if they think you might need some assistance they will take you up in the lift and let you in between the various apartments – meaning you tour everything on the 1st floor in one trip.

There is a lot to take in – we tended to focus on the tapestries.  There are quite a few, including 12 that tell stories of Abraham which were woven in the 1500’s.   One of these is currently displayed separate from the others, with a special light display that illuminates the tapestry with the colors as it would have looked when it was new.  The tapestries are amazing for the amount of work that went into them, and when they were brightly colored they must have been a truly fabulous sight.

(this is a different tapestry, not as fine but in a room with enough light to take a photo)

Margery was also very interested in the Delft pottery, and the docents would often overhear her questions and pipe in with interesting facts.  They have a collection of 7 floor standing vases, pagoda looking things with individual spouts to hold the flowers.  Apparently these vases were valued at £10mil for the set – so they don’t put flowers in them anymore.  As we were waiting for the lift downstairs another docent told us that the top was knocked off one by a conservator hanging a canopy.  Oops.  The docent said the staff do more damage to the place than the public…

After lunch we went to see the famous Hampton Court maze (planted about 1690) and decided to try it.  Steve found it to be an excellent maze as the hedges were actually tall enough to block his view. 

The presentations throughout the palace are focused on Henry VIII and his life.  They had a costumed Henry VIII roaming around the palace.  Margery had to go see.  At first Margery was too shy to get her photo taken, but then she decided she did want it – and I think it is a fabulous shot.

We had a very pleasant morning out, but after about 4 hours I was exhausted.  Thanks for coming out with us Margery, and letting us help celebrate your 90th birthday!

After the morning at the Transport Museum, I explored Luzern while Sarah got about some important shopping. The Rosengart Collection featuring Paul Klee (and Pablo Picaso) was my main stop. No, not that Paul Klee; the Swiss painter Paul Klee. I had never known anything about him before this trip, but Rick Steves gave him high praise so I decided to have a go. I was shocked. As a child I enjoyed color gradients and placing sections of similar colors next to each other. So did Paul Klee. I fancied assymetry. So did Paul Klee. I liked disembodied figures. So did Paul Klee. Paul Klee painted what I would have painted if I had artistic talent, but he did it half a century before I was born. Amazing!

Here is Paul Klee’s Head of Man, Going Senile from 1922.

Here is my computer-generated Hi Vern from 1991. I think the similarity to Klee’s Head of Man is obvious. Don’t you?

Sarah and I took a trip into London one evening to watch a Bulls-Jazz NBA exhibition game at the O2 arena. The Chicago Bulls were my favorite team back when MJ was stroking it; I got chills when the Bulls entrance theme began. I guess that the Utah Jazz are my favorite now because my boy Deron Williams (University of Illinois) is their star player.

Overall the crowd was very enthusiastic, although it was clear that they did not understand the rules very well. People were harshly criticizing the refs at the end of they game when the teams were fouling on purpose (“Crumbs! Let ‘em play!”).

The crowd was very partial to the Bulls because they have a Brit (Luol Deng) on the team, however they would applaud every good play. At the end of the game when the score was close they were booing the Jazz players shooting free throws because they wanted the Bulls to win. But the boos would quickly turn to raucous cheering when the Jazz player hit the free throw. Then the Bulls won on a last second shot and the crowd went berserk. It was definitely the most unusual sporting atmosphere I have ever witnessed

There is a tradition of “Painting the (Assembly) Hall Orange” at University of Illinois basketball games where all fans attend wearing the bright orange of the team colors (orange and blue). It is very impressive and certainly strikes fear and visual impairments into opposing teams.

To support Deron and show my Illini spirit, I decided to Paint the O2 Orange. It was, ah, not so impressive.

The Schrockinator

We had three nights and two full days in Luzern. The first day our main event was a visit to the Swiss Museum of  Transport. We spent the morning there, but really could have spent all day if we had the stamina.

The guidebook advertised it as a nice walk from town. Well, we should have taken the boat. It was a LONG walk, nice, but long.

The museum is probably our favorite science-oriented museum we’ve ever been to.  There were so many interesting exhibits - both full size and in miniature.  The main courtyard has a full airliner and steam boat, along with scooters they encourage you to use to get across the expanse. 

The auto exhibit has a wall of cars and trucks with a cool elevator that brings them up close into view (narration in German while we were there).

There was a nice planetarium that was running a show explaining the zodiac and how the constellations move through the sky throughout the year.  (over the loudspeaker in German, but a handheld device played English or the language of your choice)

The train exhibit was amazing.  Dozens of engines and cars – including many specialty types. 

And a scale model of the famous Gothard tunnel, including the church you pass three times.  (we thought this vignette was pretty cool)

The outside of the automobile building was covered in road signs.  Very cool.

One of the most brilliant things in the museum was a room with an aerial photograph of all of Switzerland as a floor.   You could see pretty much every street and building in the country.  (we found the Ebenalp mountain hut that we had visited two days before)  We loved the idea and think that they should have more things like this in visitors centres around the world.  (one of London or New York City would be fabulous)

As you entered you put on cool looking red felt Swiss slippers.  Steve looking  for a landmark.

The second most brilliant thing in the museum was this wacky Rube Goldberg contraption.  There was a metal ball that travelled throughout – taking almost 5 minutes!  It captured every transport mechanism, and probably every Swiss stereotype in a very clever and tongue-in-cheek way.  I could have stood there for an hour watching it.

An example of some of the inventive building design.  The entire back wall of the main entrance building was embedded with automobile wheels.

  It is absolutely worth a visit for you  if you can work Luzern into your itinerary.  It is worth a full day if you are a transport buff.  We were there half a day and only saw part of what we wanted to see – not looking at any of the space or flight exhibits and only scratching the surface of the boat exhibit.  This is a museum that we will most definitely have to take our kids to someday.

Saturday night Steve and I were lucky to attend a friend’s birthday party.  We met and mingled with the other guests over drinks, then sat down for dinner.  We sat opposite a co-worker of mine and her husband, Chris.  About an hour or so into the meal, after talking about how long we’ve been married, he asked when we thought we might have children.  I looked at Steve thoughtfully for a second and replied “oh, we were thinking about February.”   Chris looked confused and said it was a little late for that, because I wasn’t pregnant.  To which I stood up and let him get a good look at my profile.  He couldn’t believe it.

Note to self – wear black turtleneck sweater more often…

One of the benefits of having a train pass is that you tend to go places that are sort of on the way just because you can.

The second full day of our trip started in Appenzell and ended in Luzern.  We took the long way, to make a short stop in Liechtenstein, just to see what all the fuss was about.  We took three trains and two buses to get to the centre of Liechtenstein.  Since we were on the bus going past the ‘Welcome to Liechtenstein’ sign we posed for a photo in front of the Tourist Information kiosk to prove we were here.

The castle up on top of the hill.  The royal family lives there, and you can tour a bit, but it takes a long time to get up there so we skipped.

There was an interesting little postal museum.  The post is very important in Liechtenstein.  The museum was quite interesting to look at for a half hour break or so.  The post is an amazingly large percentage of the GDP of the country.  We did our bit and mailed one postcard to my Grandma Johnson.

Steve had to sample the local beer – which had an awesome slogan: “One Land, One Beer.”  Liechtenstein isn’t really big enough for more than one beer, actually.

I got some yummy french fries.

After an hour or so we ran out of things to do so we caught the bus out of town to the train station just across the border back in Switzerland.

Our plan was to take two more trains to Luzern, but a train accident closed the track, so we had to re- route, and it took 3 trains instead.

Total for the day.  6 trains and 3 bus rides.

Steve and I spent a very relaxing two weeks in Switzerland this September.  We traveled the first two weeks of September last year as well, and find those weeks to be the perfect combination of good weather and diminished crowds.  Problem is that those weeks are also very pleasant at home and we miss out, but we’d rather have good weather on holiday and crummy weather at home.

The 29th (Saturday) was an easy travel day.  We had an early afternoon flight – we just don’t do crazy early flights if they can be avoided.  We arrived to Zurich around 5pm and took the train to Appenzell.  We stayed at the Hotel Appenzell, which we would highly recommend.  The room was the nicest we had the whole trip, and our room had a beautiful view of the town square and the hills beyond.

On the 30th we took a short train ride to Ebenalp to catch the lift up for hiking. 

This was our first day, and we were ‘taking it easy’ to see how I would do.  I was about 4 months pregnant at the start of the trip and not out of the exhausted phase yet.  I was slower than normal, but generally felt very well.  We wished we had brought our serious hiking boots almost immediately.  We had left them at home thinking that we wouldn’t use them since we were taking it easy, but we would have been much happier even on the flat trails as they are quite uneven. 

We hiked along the ridge over to a farm as a destination.  At that point you could see the next mountain hut, Schafler, glistening in the sun. 

We decided to give it a go, going as slow as I needed to.    We are glad we did as we had many excellent views and the walk wasn’t bad at all.  Yes, we got passed a lot, but speed was not the goal.  The grazing animals made for good company.

At the top we were rewarded with something to eat and the first of many good apple juices and ciders we’d have on the trip.  The non-alcoholic apple juices are produced by the brewing companies that make the hard cider, and they are lightly carbonated (generally).  They are extremely good.

We walked back down to the top of the lift and had to decide to take the lift down or walk down.  We decided to walk as there was a cave and hut on the way we wanted to see.  The cave and hut were quite a sight, the hut would be an amazing place to stay the night, but only if you were a VERY light packer and could schlep your bag up and down the trail from the top of the lift (you could just take a day pack up and leave your bigger bags at the train station at the bottom of the lift).

It was at the cave where we heard our first English of the trip.  This was a surprise to go 24 hours in Switzerland without hearing ANY English.

On the way down we did pass some people, including a family with an incredibly whiney 11 or 12-year-old boy.  I can’t remember if he was whingeing in English or some other language, but the sound of a too-big kid whining is universal.  

An hour or so later as we were STILL walking down, we were doubting the decision to walk it and REALLY missing our hiking boots, but remembering how unsightly it is to whine we kept our frustration to ourselves.  We were so happy when we finally got down.  We could hardly walk at this point, not from exertion but from using all those wierd leg muscles you only use downhill, that hadn’t been used in a very long time.  It would be 4 days until I could go down stairs without pain…

So, tally for the day, 280 metres of climbing and 1058 metres of descent.  Not bad for an old preggers woman, eh?

PS:  Yes, I know these blog posts are slow in coming, but I’m pregnant and we’ve both had the flu since.  Please forgive us.   If you’re nice I might even put up posts from LAST year’s trip to Spain and Greece.

My nephew John has a great laugh.  Click on the photo below to see the video.

John was a little slap-happy after a busy day in London.  Margie got him laughing by acting goofy.  Here he is laughing at a funny pregnant lady jumping up and down.

He and Uncle Steve like to chill – Steve would carry him around like this helping him check out the action in the house, this time it was dinner getting made in the kitchen.  The kitchen was quite a mysterious draw to John while he was here.  We kept the door closed generally, and everytime he saw the door open he would crawl as fast as he could over to try to see what treasures were inside.

Although there were not a lot of pictures of them, Uncle Steve and John had a good time together.  Steve made a fire for us on several evenings, and John wanted to help. 

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In his entire 30-odd years Steve has never changed a baby’s diaper.  Unless there was an emergency, he wants the first diaper he changes to be his own kid’s.  Looks like he’ll get there, as he avoided diaper duty all 8 days John was here.