Month: April 2022

Here’s our view this morning looking straight out from our balcony and then to the right and left in Corniglia. It is a perfect location and we’ve loved being here.

Today we’re going to Manarola for a few hours. As you can see from the photos above, it continues to be fine weather and the temperature will get to the low 60s today.

The current village of Manarola dates back to the 12th century, however, Romans were here long before that but were a bit inland and not on the seafront here. Most of this area was under the control of the city-state Genoa, a major commercial power in the Mediterranean. Manarola has always been a fishing and wine-making village. And I think it is interesting that the dialect in each of the 5 villages is slightly different. To the locals, which village you live in is easy to know by the way one speaks. Although we group the villages together as the Cinque Terra, each is uniquely different and none of the individual towns feels like one group of towns.

Manarola is really spectacular! I think it is the most picturesque of the 5 village. It has a beautiful harbor, and really is perched up and down the cliff side. Getting around the village is quite a workout as the rise is steep.

After strolling down the main street we ended up at the harbor. I didn’t realize how rocky the harbor is. The are lots of rocks and guys were climbing up and jumping into the water from the top. Looked kind of dangerous. But the views from the water level were nice.

There is a walkway, called the Path of Love, that is a wonderful walk along the cliff side affording magnificent views of Manarola as well as Corniglia in the distance. We spent a lot of time sitting along the walkway in shady spots just gazing out at the sea, watching the birds, and listening to the sea sounds. It was just great.

Here’s the best shot of Manarola that we captured.

This one is runner-up.

We had lunch in a restaurant along the main street and then headed back to Corniglia for a rest before a dinner out in an upscale restaurant very near our Airbnb.

Walking through the tunnel to get from the Manarola main street to the train station, I saw a photo on the wall that I thought was great, so I took a photo of the photo. I don’t really have any photos of the village of Corniglia as a whole, and this one shows off how the village is not a sea level.

Again, I’ll say that our little flat in Corniglia was just perfect and our time in the Cinque Terre has been beyond our wildest dreams. It’s been grand! Tomorrow we’re off to Naples for a short stay. We’ll be traveling all day via several trains. Let’s hope the travel gods are back from their day off!

The Cinque Terre has been on my bucket list for a long time. The pictures I’ve seen of the 5 villages just look so beautiful. Christine got me a jigsaw puzzle earlier this year that was a wonderful picture of Manarola. After I finished it, we left it on the card table in our living room and every day I would say, “I can’t believe we’re going to go there.”

The Cinque Terre is now a national park and UNESCO world heritage site. Historically, the area was important for trade and security due to its tactical location near the Mediterranean Sea. And of course, there is Roman history and influence. Most of the villages were controlled by the Romans, but I did read that the Greeks may have been the first conquering inhabitants of Riomaggiore. Certainly you know that Romans were involved with Corniglia, which gets its name from Gens Cornelia, one of the greatest patrician houses of Rome.

Over the centuries people have built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the Ligurian Sea. The main agricultural products are grapes and olives. You also see lemon trees everywhere. Paths, trains, and boats connect the villages as cars can only reach them with great difficulty from the outside via narrow and precarious mountain roads, but cars are not allowed in the villages. Unfortunately, many of the paths between the villages are closed due to landslides that have devastated the area. The landslides are partially caused by the disappearing agriculture in the area. The terraces of rubble stone walls are eroding and falling down because the farmers are leaving and this causes significant water runoff leading to the landslides. It’s interesting to note that the arrival of the train connecting all the villages with the outside world also had a detrimental effect because local people migrated out in search of an easier life. But the trains brought the hordes of tourists which is what keeps the economy of the area propped up. All the villages are jammed with tourists now. I can’t imagine what it is like at the height of the tourist season which is quickly approaching.

Our adventure today started with a short bus ride down to the train station. We haven’t braved the Lardarina, the nearly 400 steps down (and we will never do the Lardarina coming up!). Trains are frequent and so we were in the southern-most of the 5 villages, Riomaggiore, in just a few minutes. This small village feels like a working village. It has a very narrow, but busy harbor where fishermen are active. Walking down to the harbor from the train station you go through a long tunnel and then once out of the tunnel you kind of get funneled down the main street to the harbor, which is where all the action is. You can go up a set of stairs to a viewing platform overlooking the harbor. We sat and had a cappuccino at a little cafe overlooking the harbor.

We decided to take a boat tour in order to see all 5 villages from the sea. Christine isn’t happy near water unless she can get on a boat. There is essentially a “bus boat” that travels to 4 of the villages and this is how lots of people get from village to village. We chose a ticket from Riomaggiore, the southern-most village to Monterosso, the northern-most village because we wanted to see the whole Cinque Terre coastline. So did about 300 other tourists queued up to get on the boat so it was difficult to find a spot where you could see and get some good photos.

We disembarked in Monterosso and strolled around the older section. It was a little less touristy so we could take our time and enjoy the lovely village. We found a really interesting church, St. John the Baptist Church, which had a striped exterior. The style of the architecture is called Ligurian Gothic, unique to this region of Italy. The exterior had alternating stripes of white marble and dark green (which looked black) serpentine marble. The interior was amazing in white and dark green. It is also famous for its beautiful rosette window.

Here are a couple of other photos taken in Monterosso.

We walked over to the newer section of Monterosso which is much more trendy, but we found a restaurant right over the water and had a great lunch listening to the sea lapping the shoreline. Monterosso has a couple of long, pebbly beaches so this is where people come to sunbathe and swim. We actually saw people in the sea, but watching them get into the water demonstrated by their faces just how cold the water is.

After lunch we were off by train to Vernazza, just a couple of minutes away. Vernazza, historically, had a very important harbor and was a trading center. The harbor, although small, is the place to hang out. It has a very long breakwater with a bench running the entire length. We were able to sit in the shade and just watch the goings on. There is a small beach so kids were playing and others were sunbathing on the rocks.

By now we were getting tired so we headed back to Corniglia. We think we picked the perfect place to stay. It feels like a real little neighborhood and not a very touristy area, although lots of tourists come to see the village during the day. But by evening, the tourists are gone and the locals come out to enjoy an evening stroll calling our to each other and catching up on the news of the day. This morning, I saw how people get their supplies. Just below our balcony, vans pulled up and set up tables showing wares. You can see from the photo below the hardware van and the bulk supplies van.

The Cinque Terre is an amazing and interesting place. I’m very glad we decided to come. Initially, with our planning, I thought we could do Cinque Terre (my bucket list) or the Amalfi Coast (Christine’s bucket list). I was worried that so many stops and changes of Aibnbs and hotels would be too tiring. Yes, we are tired, but this has been so worth it. Tomorrow we’ll go to the one remaining village that we haven’t visited, Manarola, so I can see in person my jigsaw puzzle picture.

Well, the travel gods decided to take a day off. Our trip today was by train from Milan to one of the villages of the Cinque Terre. We our departure from Milan was delayed. We knew we had a very short transfer time in the main station in Genoa, but because we were late arriving we missed our train to the second station in Genoa. It’s pretty confusing figuring out what to do. The announcements are all in Italian. If there were announcements in English you can’t hear them because of all the noise in these very busy train stations. And the worst part for us was all the steep stairs going down and up when transferring from one platform to another. There were no escalators and we couldn’t always find an elevator. We definitely need to learn a better way to pack and have luggage that is easier to carry. It was overwhelming, anxiety-producing, and exhausting. We finally managed to get on a train going in the right direction, but it didn’t stop at our little village, so we had to go to La Spezia and get on a local train coming back, which we did.

The Cinque Terre is primarily 5 picturesque villages along the Ligurian Sea which is an arm of the Mediterranean, and the coastline is often called the Italian Riviera. Each of the 5 main villages cling to the cliff side and 4 of the 5 have small harbors. The village we picked is Corniglia, the middle village, and it is the one without a harbor. I thought being centrally located would be good. The challenging thing is that Corniglia is perched atop the cliff and so getting up to it is difficult if you walk. However, there is a small bus that will take you up. Tourists get packed into it like sardines because there are a lot of tourists. You could walk up the 382 switchback staircase, called the Lardadina, which of course, we skipped. Getting from the train platform to the road where the bus was located was up a steep set of stairs. Fortunately, a very nice young couple offered to help carry our suitcases up, for which we were profoundly thankful for. We must have looked just like we felt, two exhausted old ladies having difficulty carrying our luggage.

We messaged our Airbnb host, who came to meet us at a little square in the lower village. She arrived and walked us to our Airbnb, which thankfully was nearby. But, more stairs up to the apartment. Finally, after a long travel day, we were in our Corniglia apartment, and it was wonderful. The host, Donatella, spoke nearly no English, and she went to great length showing us everything in the apartment and then drawing on a map and explaining how we should make the most of our time in Cinque Terre. Every sentence ended in, “okay?” and I kept saying okay. I got the gist of what she was saying because if you listened very closely, within a sentence there was an English word. She was very enthusiastic and welcoming.

After a nap and some unpacking, we went to a market just around the corner to get some supplies. We then decided to do a little exploring of the village. It was so much fun to turn a corner, go down a narrow little street, and end up at a place with drop gorgeous sea views.

After walking around for a bit, we stopped in a cafe just below our balcony for a drink. As I said in a message to our daughter Eve, Christine is Aperol Spritzing her way through Europe.

So, after a frustrating morning and early afternoon of transit dilemmas, we ended up in a cozy, comfortable Airbnb with a wonderful view. We are happy campers! Here’s what we saw this evening from our balcony.

You can’t be this close to Lake Como and not go spend at least a day in one of the little villages bordering the lake. We did catch a glimpse of the lake from the train when we traveled from Luzern to Milan, and that glimpse made it a certainty that we would do a day trip.

We walked back over to the train station this morning, only a 5 minute walk from the Airbnb. This time, it didn’t seem so overwhelming as there were fewer people in the station. It’s still a madhouse, but we had a better idea of how to navigate. We found our platform and settled in for the hour ride to Varenna. Once out of Milan and closer to the mountains, the scenery from the train was really great.

To be honest, I picked the train to Varenna based on a Rick Steves video about the Italian Lake District. He said this village was one of his favorites and he suggested that from here the thing to do was ferry hopping to other villages. We walked down the hill in Varenna to the ferry dock and boarded the ferry to Bellagio.

Lake Como is just stunning. On one end is the view of the snow-capped Alps and on the other green mountains and all along the shoreline little villages dot the landscape, some of which climb up the steep mountainside. It’s just breath-taking. Across the lake from Bellagio the enormous rock clearly shows a stripe of granite diagonally across the mountain showing just how forceful the push upward was to create these mountains.

Lake Como is shaped like a big upside down Y and Bellagio, referred to as the Pearl of Lake Como, sits on the promontory at the crotch of the Y. It’s a very quaint little village, touristy of course, but nonetheless, just beautiful. It has a long promenade along the lake, beautifully landscaped. There are numerous cafes and restaurants where the views of the lake are wonderful. Like all the villages along the lake, there are no cars in the village proper and no real streets, just long steep stairs up and down the levels of the village.

We sat for quite a while along the beautiful promenade just drinking in the surroundings. It was all eye candy! The flowers along the promenade made everything that much more beautiful. And watching all the classic wooden boats that are mostly water taxis skimming across the lake really made you feel that you were at Lake Como. We found a nice garden nearby and strolled through that. The azaleas were blooming as well as flowering trees.

We had a lovely lunch on the terrace of a hotel’s restaurant right over the water. Again, just stunning to be in the midst of such a gorgeous place. And I hope you noticed from all the photos just what a great weather day we had, upper 60s and sunny. A perfect day for a day trip to Lake Como.

We ferried back across the lake to Verenna and strolled on the so-called Walk of Lovers. It’s a metal pedestrian walkway that is cantilevered over the water and it offers wonderful views.

Varenna is similar to Bellagio with lots of steep steps up alleyways and brightly colored houses. There are many lovely cafes and restaurants right along the lake. Varenna has a very small area, called a beach, where people come of hangout and sunbath and will swim when the water gets a bit warmer.

We then had to make our way to the train station, uphill naturally, and return to Milan. It was an easy trip to make, just an hour by train. We counted ourselves very lucky to have had such a great weather day to enjoy this absolutely stunning place, but really we feel blessed to even be taking this trip. What a wonderful day we had at Lake Como.

It was raining hard this morning, which prompted us to stay at the Airbnb for the morning, but by midday the weather cleared and we set off to Milan Cathedral, referred to as the Duomo. We had an adventure because we braved the Milan Metro. The metro here is quite easy to navigate and is very clear to understand. There are just 4 lines, red, yellow, green, and purple, and the direction one wants to go is based on the first or last stop of that line. You buy tickets from machines near the platform entrances, stick the ticket through a machine that time stamps it and you use the ticket again to exit the subway. Tickets are good for 90 minutes. The cost is 2 Euros per ticket. We had no trouble at all navigating through all that. We were very proud of ourselves for being brave enough to take the subway.

The metro stop brought you up the stairs and right into the enormous plaza in front of the cathedral. And, as you might expect, the place was swarming with people. But seeing the cathedral for the first time kind of takes your breath away.

Its an amazing structure with tons of incredible sculptures all over the exterior. Before we went to the cathedral, we first visited Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the glitziest shopping mall I’ve ever seen. It’s on the left-hand side of the plaza. The Galleria is a 5-story mall covered in curved glass and lavishly decorated with patriotic mosaics and statues, legacy of the chaotic era of Italian unification, manifesting the country’s newly-acquired self-confidence. The Galleria was built between 1865 and 1877 and is named after the first king of unified Italy. The Galleria is comprised of 2 glass-vaulted covered passages crossing in an octagonal central piazza below a very high glass dome. The floor is adorned with marble mosaics depicting emblems of the main Italian cities. There is one mosaic containing a bull and locals believe that stepping on the bull’s image with the heel of the fight foot and spinning around can bring good luck. Of course, we both tried doing that, not an easy thing because with so much spinning over the years, there’s a substantial hole in the marble. The Galleria is filled with top name stores, Prada, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, to name a few. It is glitz galore everywhere.

On the other side of the Galleria we found a statue of Leonardo diVinci in a little park. That happened to be across the street from the famous opera house La Scala.

We walked back over to the Duomo and walked around the building taking in the exterior. There are so many things to see. It reminded us of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, in terms of how much exterior art work was visible.

We had purchased advance tickets to skip the line, but today there wasn’t much of a line. I only bought entrance to the cathedral. There were also tickets to the rooftop, either for the walk up a bazillion stairs to the top, or lift tickets to the top. I thought it was going to be raining so I didn’t buy those. However, as we walked around the cathedral we saw the lift entrance. We looked at each other, and then we were on the way to the ticket office to purchase tickets for the rooftop terrace via lift.

Before the excursion to the top, we walked around the inside of the cathedral with our mouths hanging open. It was awesome! Construction began in 1386, and like most mammoth churches started in the 13th and 14th centuries, this one took 6 centuries to complete. This cathedral is the largest in Italy (can’t count St. Peter’s at the Vatican because that is a sovereign state), the second largest in Europe, and the third largest in the world. Although Napoleon did a lot of plundering across Europe, one of the better things he did was to get the facade of the cathedral completed in the early 1800s just before he was crowned King of Italy. There is a large statue of Napoleon in the plaza in front of the church to honor his involvement in getting the cathedral construction moving along. It was finally finished in 1965.

The columns in the church are massive, each with very ornate sculptures adorning the tops. The stained glass is absolutely incredible showing Bible stories in lots of small panels across the huge windows. The shear size of the place is overwhelming.

We wandered for a bit, then would sit in a pew and just swivel our heads every which way to take in all the intricate details as well as just sit and feel just how massive the place is, then wander some more.

Then it was on to the rooftop terrace and I’m so glad we decided to do this. Being up among the spires and nearer to all the incredible sculptures was amazing. And what a break we got with the weather. It was sunny and warm up on the roof and the views of Milan were great.

There were lots of people just hanging out on the rooftop terrace sunning themselves and having fun. It was such an interesting experience being up there on top of this incredible cathedral. We so glad we did it.

We navigated our way back to the metro and squeezed ourselves into a subway car. It was rush hour and the metro was very crowded but doing what the locals do (with a million tourists, too) is fun. It gives a good feeling of what life is like in Milano. And we survived the experience unscathed and happy to have ventured out on the Metro. And wouldn’t you know it, just as soon as we came up the Metro stairs out into the plaza in front of the train station, it was raining. So, how fortunate we were to be able to get to the Duomo in good weather.

It was a wonderful afternoon! And we have another adventure planned for tomorrow, so stay tuned.

We finally ran out of good weather. This morning we needed to walk to the bus station to take a bus to Arth-Golau where we were getting the train to Milan. From early morning it was raining quite heavily in Luzern. Fortunately, though, while we were hoofing it to the train station so we could be undercover for two blocks, the rain lessened and we were able to walk over without getting soaked. We returned to the restaurant Tibits in the train station for a coffee and muffin.

We then headed over to the bus station, which isn’t a station, just a parking lot, where we were able to stand under an awning to stay out of the rain. I thought I had bought train tickets, but it was actually fun taking the bus. We saw much more of the countryside and stopped at several little very picturesque towns to unload and pickup passengers. Listening to the conversations of the locals was fun, all in German, and some in Italian. Because it was raining and rather foggy, we weren’t able to see spectacular views of the mountains, which was a shame. However, here’s some of what we did see.

We arrived in Arth-Goldau where we waited for our train. Even though we had tried very hard to not take big suitcases and not pack too much stuff, we need to do a much better job. Even though we did manage to get into carry-on size suitcases, we both had backpacks stuffed full which were as heavy as the suitcases. Wearing them for any length of time was very uncomfortable so our only other option was to sit them on top of the suitcase and try rolling everything. Well, you know that on most suitcases the wheels are generally pathetic and pavement is not friendly to suitcase wheels, so wheeling was a real struggle. If we travel in the future, we’re going to have to find a different way to pack and carry.

After picking up some lunch to eat on the train, we had to stand on the train platform to await the train. It was pouring rain and where we had to stand was very far down the platform, and in an uncovered area. We waited undercover for as long as we could and then moved down the platform to board, getting soaked in the process.

Once settled, which wasn’t easy because although our tickets said coach 1, seats 11 and 12, no such seats existed. But we grabbed a couple of empty seats and settled in. After leaving Arth-Goldau, the train goes through a very long tunnel and several little tunnels, through the Alps, and when we popped out of a tunnel, we were in bright sunshine. It was amazing to see the weather difference in just a short period of time. These photos were all taken from the train window, so they aren’t the best.

We crossed into Italy at Chiasso were border guards came through the train. Italy requires travelers to fill out an online passenger locator form, which I did. I never received a verification for access to the digital form that contains a QR code, which the guards were looking for on everyone’s cellphone. Fortunately, I had printed out the forms I had filled out for Christine and me and I quickly dug them out of my backpack. The guard snatched the forms from my hand and continued on down the aisle. Hope I don’t need those forms as proof of registration someplace else.

As we got to the lake district, Lake Lugano and Lake Como, the scenery was stunning. Everything was so beautiful.

We’re making a day trip to Lake Como on Wednesday so you’ll see LOTS more photos of this beautiful area.

Before we knew it, and after Christine thought she lost me on the train after a trip to the WC, we arrived at the central station in Milan. Holy smokes, what a zoo that place is! The station has 24 tracks. Every day about 320,000 passengers pass through the station using about 500 trains, for an annual total of 120 million passengers. I think all 320,000 passengers that day were in the station at the time we arrived. It was pretty difficult to move around. It was really hard to find an exit and to get out of the station. Then once outside, the plaza in front of the station was also jam packed with people, and crazy skateboarders careening around, and finding our bearings was quite the challenge. My Google maps kept going to dark mode and I couldn’t see the directions. That was really annoying. We had a paper map, but it was hard to place us on the map because we didn’t know which side of the station we had exited, but we managed the couple minute walk to find the entrance to our Airbnb building.

I will say that the Milan train station is a wonder. Construction was started in 1912, but WWI impeded the construction. When Mussolini became Prime Minister, he wanted the construction to be more elaborate to represent the power of the Fascist regime. The station was finally completed and dedicated in 1931. It’s a pretty awesome building.

In the plaza in front of the station is a sculpture of a large, white apple that has stitching to put back a bite that was taken out of the apple. Kind of weird.

We settled in to our Airbnb. Christine took a little nap and I looked at the subway map trying to figure out how to get places. We then walked around our neighborhood and located a grocery and purchased a few things for breakfast. I will say that we’ve been spoiled by the neat, tidy and clean places we’ve been in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. Milan is none of those things. After our walk we had dinner in a restaurant next door to our Airbnb and called it a day.

We have limited time in Milan since one of our days here will be a day trip to Lake Como. And the weather forecast is not conducive to walking around outside, so we may be hampered in taking in the sights. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Today is Sunday and there are lots of church bells ringing that sound so nice up and down the river. The bells of the Jesuit Church right in front of our Airbnb actually rings most at about 5:00 p.m., but not so much this morning. However, all over Old Town and down river, the bells clanged away as we were heading out.

Because the weather forecast was for rain in the afternoon, I wanted to get more sightseeing in this morning, so we were out and about by 9:00.

The thing I was interested to see was Museggmauer, the Musegg Wall. The historic city wall was once part of the fortification of Luzern. Initially, the fortification was down around the river area, as the Chapel Bridge and Spreuer Bridge were part of that fortification defending against invasion from Lake Luzern. As the town grew, a wall was built around the city. The wall and 9 towers were built in the 13th century. With the preservation of the wall, it is one of the longest defensive walls still standing in the country. Each of the towers is named and served a different purpose.

On our way up the steep climb to the wall, we really appreciated the scenery, especially the wisteria, which is in full bloom all over Luzern. Christine said she wished she could take a picture of the smell. We also walked past a farm having Highland cattle and a great saying on the side of a shed.

Walking up to the wall and towers was amazing.

What made it especially great was that a young woman who was walking her dog up to the top of the fortification stopped to chat. She wanted to tell us about the interesting birds that were nesting in the wall. She then gave us suggestions about what to see around the fortification. This woman’s name was Iwona, who grew up in Germany (we sailed past her hometown during our cruise), but is now living in Luzern. We chatted for a while and she went on her way with her lovely dog Tessa. But as we wandered around the fortification, we would run in to Iwona and chat some more. Christine told her our life story and all about our travels. Iwona was really impressed that we’ve been together for 41 years and shared that since her breakup with her boyfriend that she has had a hard time. She is a very lovely woman and we seemed to have a connection. We got her email address and we plan on staying in touch.

From the walkway on top of the wall we got spectacular views of Lake Luzern and the Alps. Luzern is often called “gateway to the Alps,” and I can see why.

Iwona offered to take our picture, a nice gesture since we are terrible at selfies and we don’t have many photos of us together (this one’s for you Joyce).

One of the towers is the named Zeitturm (Time Tower) and it was purposely designed to accommodate the city clock. This tower was built in 1403. The clock dial measures 3-4 meters “carried” by two giant figures painted on the facade. Placed in such a way that one could read the time from afar, the digits were made large enough to be seen by fishermen on the lake. Since the late Middle Ages the Time Tower has had the privilege of the first strike; its clock chimes the hour one minute before any other public clock in Luzern.

We strolled back down the hill to the river and snapped photos along the way.

We are on move tomorrow so I thought it would be a good idea to find our departure place. Although I had intended to purchase train tickets to Milan, I unknowingly booked bus tickets to Arth-Goldau, Switzerland. There we will then get on the train to Milan. The bus station is a few blocks past the train station and now we know where we’ll need to go tomorrow, about a 15 minute walk from the Airbnb. Right near our Airbnb is a sculpture, so I had to stop and say hi to the goatherd.

After a buffet lunch at Tibits we walked back to the Airbnb. The rain finally caught up with us so staying in for the afternoon was perfect as it afforded us an opportunity to do some laundry, which was a challenge because all the instructions to use the washer and dryer in the building’s laundry room were in German. And you had to open up a storage cabinet that had meters for each machine that you had to feed with Swiss franc coins to purchase minutes of time (yes, even for the washer). After loading the washer and figuring out how to start it, I stood watching the washer for a few minutes, it was a front loader with a window. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t seeing any water. Finally, I noticed that I needed to turn a faucet on from the sink nearby. That fixed the no water problem. Using the dryer was easier. But we have been equipment challenged at the Airbnb because we couldn’t figure out how to use the coffee machine this morning.

We went around the corner for dinner at the Bistro du Theater, a nice little restaurant. Christine said that she wanted a big salad for dinner and amazingly this bistro had a whole page of salad bowls on the menu. That was perfect and we both enjoyed our dinner.

Now it’s time to get packed up and be ready to go on to our next adventure, Milano, in the morning.

Our riverboat cruise came to an end this morning in Basel, Switzerland. We had breakfast on the ship and then set off by bus to the Zurich airport where we were taking a train to Luzern. It was kind of sad to be ending our cruise. We had a lot of fun and met many wonderful women, especially Ann and Christa from Wisconsin. We thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them. Also, Lynn and Christy from Florida were fun as well as Lisa and Lorraine. At any rate, the bus arrived at the airport and we said our goodbyes and gave hugs and then we were off on our next adventure. This past week, everything was arranged and done for us. We just had to sit back and let the cruise director take care of all the details. Now we’re on our own and we’ll see how well I did making all the travel and lodging bookings and whether we can figure out how to get from here to there.

Our first test was finding the train station at the airport. We intentionally did not go down the fake escalator having no steps and did the smart thing and took an elevator. There’s a pretty big train station below one of the airport terminals. I am so impressed with the transportation systems in Europe. Our bus guide said that it is possible to get to every village in Switzerland by public transport, train, tram, regional bus, and local bus. I suspect that it is very similar throughout European countries.

Having found our train platform, we went back upstairs to have lunch and wait for our train. We left Zurich at 1:15 and arrived in Luzern at 2:25. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 4:00, but we went to look for the address. We wandered around for an hour; it was supposed to be a 10 minute walk from the train station. We had no luck locating the address. A nice lady stopped and asked if she could help, but she wasn’t sure of the address. Christine asked a shopkeeper nearby, but he pointed us in the wrong direction. Christine sat on a bench with all our luggage and I went down an alley looking for some hidden entrance and saw a women in a shop and asked. She knew right where we were to go and led me to the entrance. We had walked by the place a half-dozen times but because the entrance was set back from the rest of the shops we didn’t notice it. I then went back to collect Christine and the luggage and by now it was check-in time.

The Airbnb is austere, but nice. Its beauty, however, is its location, right near all the major historical sites around the river and directly across from Old Town. Here’s what we can see from our window.

We rested a little and then headed out to see some sights. After a week of wonderful weather, the next few days have rain in the forecast so I wanted to see a bit of Old Town Luzern without getting wet. Luzern is the German spelling for Lucerne. This part of Switzerland is German-speaking. There are 4 official languages in Switzerland, German, French, Italian, and Romansh.

The Chapel Bridge is just steps from our Airbnb. It is the symbol for Luzern, at least it is the image of Luzern that most people have in mind. The river is the Reuss River which has Lake Luzern as its mouth just a couple of hundred feet beyond Chapel Bridge. The bridge was originally built in 1333 as part of Luzern’s fortifications.

The unique paintings in the interior triangles date back to the 17th century. There originally were 147 paintings, but a devastating fire in 1993 destroyed most of them as well as a large part of the bridge. 30 of the paintings have been restored, as well as the bridge itself.

We wandered around both sides of the river and stopped for a pizza for dinner (I know – Naples is where we should be getting pizza!). Although it was chilly, it was fun sitting outside along the promenade people watching. Luzern is very touristy, for sure, but we were excited to be here enjoying the tourist experience. Here is some of what we saw today.

These photos are of Zunfthaus zu Pfistern and is one of the very few guild houses left standing in the city. The name Pfister comes from the Latin “pistor”, which was what the Romans called their bakers. The Pfister Guild was founded in Luzern in 1408 by artisans, bakers and millers. The guild hall was where the “great and the good” of this segment of society gathered and where assemblies were held to agree on the flour and bread prices and consider the membership of aspiring guild members. It is now a master bakers’ cooperative. The building’s outside had some great decorations including a family tree.

After enjoying our stroll along both sides of the river, we were ready to head on back to the apartment. It was getting very chilly and we were cold and tired. But what a beautiful place Luzern is.

We docked at the lovely little village of Braisach, Germany. Although there were several excursion options today, we decided to relax, take our time to pack, and not be overly tired for the start of the next leg of our journey. It was nice to have the ship nearly all to ourselves.

After we laid low for the morning, we strolled into Braisach, which is a very old town having (of course) a cathedral. The town was established before the Romans came, but the Romans were responsible for establishing the town as a trading post on the Rhine.

Braisach is really lovely, Everything is so clean and neat. The market square was large and had a section of fountains where children were running through the water jets coming up from the pavement. There were lots of cafes with outdoor seating.

St. Stevens’s Cathedral, high atop a volcanic rock, was originally built in the 12th century. It’s not a very ornate church, but it is stately.

This is a photo of a drawing of how Braisach looked in the Middle Ages.

The inside of the church was not terribly glitzy, as many Catholic churches.

The amazing thing was the faint murals painted on the walls. Martin Schongauer painted The Last Judgment on the back wall in the late 1400s. There were other paintings on the side walls as well. What a shame that the paintings were ruined during a restoration attempt that used varnish. The varnish dried and peeled and took the original paint off during peeling. Fortunately, some of the paint was saved and the images are faintly visible. It must have been amazing.

It was a very nice, low key couple of hours, strolling at our own pace and doing what we wanted to do on no schedule. We spent the afternoon back on the ship getting ready for our departure tomorrow, where we’ll be totally on our own navigating through Switzerland, Italy and Malta. Should be a great adventure.

I promised a few photos of the ship, so here they are.

Today’s excursion was to Strasbourg where we visited the cathedral and had a walking tour around Le Petite France, a quaint district that dates back centuries. I didn’t know much about Strasbourg, but it has quite a storied history. Amazingly, in 1988 it celebrated its 2,000th anniversary! So it existed long before the Romans arrived. Strasbourg is home to the European Human Rights Council and the parliament of the European Union.

Strasbourg is in the Alsace district of France and it has a very distinctive collective culture of both French and German. After the Middle Ages, this region was controlled by either France, Austria, or Germany over and over again. And astonishingly, between the end of WWI and the end of WWII it was French, German, French, German, and then finally French, as it remains today. Strasbourg has a large historic German section that was built in the late 1988s and early 1900s. The German emperor was trying to convince everyone that they should stay German, so he went on a building campaign to impress everyone. All the buildings being built were grand, they added electricity, public transportation, good sewer systems, and great public spaces. We bused through the German section and it looked very nice.

The cathedral in Strasbourg is quite old, having been started in the late 1200s. It’s hard to get one’s head wrapped out just how old things in Europe are. What we call antiques in the U.S. are nothing compared to what antiques are here in Europe. While some parts of this cathedral are Romanesque, it really is considered one of the greatest Gothic cathedrals. Until 1874, the cathedral was the tallest building in the word. It remains the highest still standing extant structure built entirely in the Middle Ages. It’s spire, however, is actually see-through, which is very unusual. I know you’re probably sick of looking at cathedral pictures, but I’m going to post a bunch. Here are external shots.

Here are internal shots.

A big attraction in the cathedral is the astronomical clock. The clock shows much more than the official time; it also indicates solar time, the day of the week (each represented by a god of mythology), the month, the year, the sign of the zodiac, the phase of the moon and the position of several planets.

After visiting the cathedral we walked around some of the Le Petite France section. This area also has a storied past. At one point it was the section where tanneries were located and so people didn’t live near it because of the smell from the tanning process. Because no one wanted to live there, it became an area where the undesirables in society were forced to locate. It had a bad reputation, and of course, it was an area of ill-repute. Now it is a very fashionable and desirable area and the wealthy and well-to-do want to live there.

On our way back to the ship our tour guide pointed out a very small, unassuming building displaying the American flag. It was the U.S. consulate to the European parliament.

So that was our day in Strasbourg, a very diverse and interesting city. With the parliament of the EU in Strasbourg, France and the Headquarters of the EU in Brussels, Belgium, there is some talk of locating all EU administrative organizations in one city to reduce the travel of the representatives and the administrative expense of running two large organization components of the EU. France votes no, and Belgium votes no. Strasbourg wants very much to remain an important center of the EU. However, with the French election this Sunday, EU participation by the French may be in jeopardy. We’ll see what happens.