September 17, 2015
Day 58: Fluelen to Lucerne, Switzerland: Go Directly to Jail
The wind has switched around 180 degrees and is now a forceful headwind. But hah hah, we are waiting for the ferry, which will take us down the lake. Once we land, though, after a brief stint of going West we will head North again, right into the wind, if it is still blowing. The mountains to the south are dim with rain so maybe we will be wind blown and soaked. Ain't touring fun!
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Lake Lucerne is a beautiful body of water, set among steep mountain slopes. The water is greenish, reflecting no doubt a bit of glacial runoff. The shores and slopes are adorned by various lovely buildings and by alpine meadows, some very high up. Our position for the night at Fluellen is at one end, and Lucerne is at the other. The "official" cycle route calls for using the passenger ferry to bypass an impossible stretch of road, the Axenstrasse, that goes north from Fluellen. Then in principle we could cycle a bit, before ferrying to the other side of the lake, at Beckenried. From there, theoretically one can cycle on to Lucerne.
The reason why the ferry is needed is that the steep mountain slopes around the lake do not leave much, or any, room for roads and/or rail lines to pass by. As a result there are lots of tunnels, as well as elevated concrete roadways that skirt the water's edge. It's not a place where a lot of consideration can be given to cycle paths.
Our ferry was the MS Rigi, a quite elegant and very capable small ship that is part if a small fleet of similar type. The Rigi was built in 1955, but comes from a tradition of lake boats that extends to the 1850's. The Rigi had lots of room for our bikes, and otherwise is fitted out with tables and chairs. From a pamphlet of the shipping company, we could see that they do a lot of dinner cruises on the lake. A really nice looking one was 1 1/2 hours, with a gourmet Indian meal. As it was, they were offering croissants and coffee, packaged ice cream, and also sandwiches. A sandwich would run you CHF 9.50 (9.50 Swiss Francs - about the same as 9.50 US) and a packaged ice cream was 3.50. Dodie called this "BC Ferries pricing - Swiss style!".
As soon as the Rigi pulled out, I was struck by how fast she moved. Her maximum speed seems to be 29 km/hr. We elected to ride all the way to Lucerne, since we did not see the point of getting on and off ferries, or of cycling the likely dicey shoreline roads in the rain. The trip to Lucerne requires 3 hours, making this a real sea cruise event.
We spent our time during the cruise first off trying to plot where we were, since the ferry criss crossed the lake and stopped at every little town. Each town, of course, was very lovely, so it was a matter of going out on deck and trying for a good shot, even though it was frequently raining and misty. And of course, our favourite game (perfected on the trains) is trying to see where the bikes would have been, and then tut tutting about how impossible that would be to cycle.
In the photos that follow, you will hopefully detect these three kinds of activities, and so understand why each was taken.
Our final activity was to fire up Booking.com and tut tut about the high cost of nice looking hotels we saw near the docks in the various towns. Finally, we had a look at Lucerne, where it seemed advisable to stop for the day. Using the price filter on Booking, the top price was given as CHF 699+ and the minimum was CHF 90. I generously set the range at 90-120, and Booking came up with exactly one place - the one at 90. This place was called the Jail Hotel. Up until 1998 it had actually been the city jail. That seemed neither here nor there. We liked the minimal price (though exorbitant outside of Switzerland) and the fact that the place was located right in the old town, and on our cycle route. So we booked it.
As the Rigi approached Lucerne, we were gratified to see that it was a town of reasonably small size, and without any high rise office towers, expressways, or other horrors. In fact as we got closer, Lucerne resolved itself to reveal a totally gorgeous place, with solidly elegant buildings that seemed uniquely Swiss, though we could not as yet quite say why.
At the dock in Lucerne we were approached with the Usual Questions first by two women from Geneva and then by Ali Reza, from Tehran, Ali, an architect, had been touring Switzerland and was on his way to meet with his girlfriend - from Toronto - at Expo 2015 in Milan. We of course enjoyed giving him a bunch of Milan and Expo tips. But as we looked around at the beautiful old buildings of Lucerne and also at one of the few modern buildings - Europa Platz - we demanded to know why modern architects had to make things so plain and ugly. Of course poor Ali had to struggle for a reply, and we are not quite sure what he came up with. He must have been ok with the inquisition, since he invited us to look him up in Tehran.
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We then proceeded directly to Jail. The place still has bars on the windows, and in fact being the jail remains its claim to fame. Rooms are named for what type of cell they were, and there are displays of jail artifacts in the corridors. The corridors are of course jail corridors, and guess what - the rooms are cells. That means they are extremely small, have little, high windows, and cots. So yes, we really have gone to Jail. Maybe it's more like debtor's prison, our crime being that we only had CHF 90 to spend. Actually, that's not quite accurate. Dodie went crazy and dropped a further CHF 20 which buys us two passes to dine in the prisoners' mess at breakfast tomorrow.
Our cell door is solid steel, so there is no opportunity for banging on the bars. Maybe at breakfast we can get the other inmates going with spoons on the tables, especially if the cappuccinos are slow in coming!
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We dropped our stuff in our cell for safekeeping (unlikely anyone could break in - unless we lose our key code, see photo below) and went out into the rain for a further look at the town. Our first "tourist" stop was the grocery store across the street. This was pretty shocking, as most prices were at least 50 percent higher than what we would expect in a similar store in Germany. We didn't buy anything right away, but returned to the street to let our choices (or not) sink in.
It was hard to do much photography because of the rain (could have bought a decent low quality umbrella for CHD 39.50, however) but maybe we did capture much of the charm of this really nice place. We tried to figure out what makes its buildings special. Firstly, they are neither too low nor too high - about six stories usually. Nor are they too narrow nor too wide. The windows are usually adorned, and the rooflines are complex. Finally, many buildings have fresco on the outside.
One special feature is the Wasserturm, an octagonal tower over 34 meters in height, built around 1300 as part of the city's fortifications. It has been used as an archive, a treasury, prison, and torture chamber (no hotel in there now, though!). This is Lucerne's trademark attraction and Switzerland's most photographed monument. Here is our effort at that:
We also naturally visited at least one church - the Jesuit one, built around 1666. It was the first large baroque church built in Switzerland. Side chapels in this church seemed to feature a lot of bones from saints, but most were not named. We mostly liked the gold trim and pink marble everywhere.
Today's ride: 6 km (4 miles)
Total: 2,633 km (1,635 miles)
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