Our second day in Switzerland we decided to take a day trip to Lake Lucerne. We had been told that this was a charming little village right on a big, beautiful lake. So we hopped on the train and about an hour later were walking into the (not so little) town of Lucerne.
I had been craving bagels for several days. I mean, a serious go-into-every-bakery-we-see kind of craving for bagels. Apparently bagels are not to be found in either Italy or Switzerland...believe me, I looked. But as we emerged from the Lucerne train station I saw a Starbucks and thought perhaps it was worth another shot... Success! Good old Starbucks had my bagel and cream cheese waiting for me..yay!
After that excitement I’m not sure how the rest of Lucerne stood a chance...but I figured we’d give it a shot since we’d come all this way. We wandered through the outdoor market, we saw the two covered bridges Lucerne is famous for, we took in the quaint little streets and alleyways. By the way Quaint is the word for Lucerne.
Then we headed up to a national geological park. Basically Switzerland used to be covered by glaciers long, long ago. And when these glaciers moved around they created really awesome holes, caves and markings in the rocks of this area. So we spent some time in awe of nature. And then, came the real fun. For some reason the Swiss decided that a good thing to go along with these geological formations would be a House of Mirrors. I am not kidding. I guess this house of mirrors was made in honor of some Swiss Queen...or maybe it was for one of the World Fairs, I forget. But it was totally awesome! We had way too much fun in the house of mirrors... we took lots of pictures but I think they are on someone elses camera...I’ll try to get them up soon.
After we finally managed to pull ourselves away from the mirrors we wandered around some more and saw lots of Cuckoo clocks, Swiss army knives and cowbells... we decided we’d had enough fun and got back on the train to Zurich. That night we took Jen and Roman out to dinner to say thanks for letting us stay. They suggested a really great Asian fusion place...which fulfilled another one of my serious cravings for anything other than Italian food. :) We got home that night and started packing up because we were off and running again the next day. Zurich was great. The perfect place for us to be after Rome. The weather was cool, the people were calm and everything was just a bit more toned down...
The next day it was up early and a series of 3 really short train rides to get to Belfort, France. This is a little, tiny town right on the France-Switzerland border. We were met at the train station by Cyndi (a family friend of Allison's who married a Frenchman and moved here) and her two kids Ariana and Sebastian. After about 20 minutes in the car (through absolutely beautiful, lush, green country side) we arrived at their home. It felt really nice to be in a family home with kids and mess and craziness. Cyndi made fantastically wonderful meals while we were there and we got to sleep in every morning due to their amazingly effective shutters. Also in the french countryside we went one day to the some vineyards and looked at the grapes, wandered around some really cute little villages and had some more awesome food cooked by Cyndi. It was a great 2 days.
And then we were off again. Cyndi's husband (Didier) had helped us figure out the rest of our train schedules and so we were ready to go. We got to the train station and went to the desk to get our seat reservations from Belfort to Paris and then from Paris to Brugge. After much searching the train station lady informed us that there were absolutely no trains to Brugge that night. We would HAVE to stay in Paris. We resigned ourselves to that miserable fate and with the help of the Sada Sats and their friend Daya (who is Parisian) found a place to stay for the night. We had 18 hours to do Paris. (The ironic part is that we had discussed doing Paris in this way before and decided that it wasn't worth it...well, I guess God had decided otherwise.) :)
And there is you're cliffhanger ending. More photos are up on www.kelseylumpkin.shutterfly.com. And next time you'll hear all about 18 Hours in Paris and maybe we'll even get through Brugge, Antwerp and Amsterdam...but then again, maybe not. :)
Love and Blessings,
KNL
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