Before this summer, I had only been to Switzerland once, while I was an undergraduate. I was helping chaperone / play as a ringer for the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony. That trip included a single day excursion to Switzerland from Germany and for some reason, the destination that day was Lucerne.
I even dug through my box of old pictures and discovered that I had some pictures of Lucerne’s most famous sight, the Lion of Lucerne.
This is not one of THOSE pictures, however, because THOSE pictures were taken on a 35mm point and shoot potato by someone with no idea how to operate it. The lion is recognizable, but only just. 31 years later, the Lion looks about the same, but my phone is a lot more forgiving of my photography skills, which probably haven’t advanced much.
At any rate, the Lion is an anti-revolutionary monument, dedicated to Swiss mercenaries who died trying to protect (checks notes) Louis the XVI. Definitely not as inspiring a story in 2025, that’s for sure. But the sculpture’s pretty cool, and it’s in a quiet little grotto in the middle of the city.
OK, Lion, tick. What are the other must-see sights in Lucerne? The two wooden bridges over the Reuss.
The first is the Chapel bridge, originally built in 1333, but substantially restored after a fire in 1993. It has wooden panels along the entire length depicting scenes from Lucerne’s history.
But those panels aren’t NEARLY as cool as the ones on the Spruer bridge, just downstream. Built in the late 1500s, the panels in THIS bridge all feature Death. Not just the abstract concept of death, but the anthropomorphic personification, doing all sorts of spooky things.
Sometimes it’s even wearing a hat.
Tag yourself! I’m the kid in red leaning on the table.
There’s DOZENS of these panels. They’re amazing.
Having looked at the major sights downtown, we decided to go check out a very different type of history, in the form of the Swiss Museum of Transport, which is, as it turns out, the most popular museum in Switzerland.
It’s set up as a number of different buildings around a central courtyard. One for trains, one for boats, one for planes, etc. This one was, unsurprisingly, for cars.
There were also a number of entire airplanes, submarines, and boats scattered about.
There was a lot of extremely photogenic stuff, but for some reason we didn’t take a lot of pictures. I’ll blame it on being late in the trip, and we were getting tired.
But pictures aside – this museum is well worth a visit. It does an excellent job of striking the balance between “entertaining for children” and “not boring for adults.” Plus, trains and planes and boats are just inherently pretty cool
One more picture – this time of a “vending machine” that would pluck a car off of the wall periodically and bring it to a turntable for people to gawp at.
After a solid few hours in the museum, it was time to set off for our next destination, and we wanted to allow plenty of time, because we had to get to an entirely different country.
Leigh and I have had a running joke ever since we were married that at some point we wanted to take a honeymoon trip to the tiny countries of Europe – Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican, Andorra, and Monaco.
And just a few weeks shy of our twentieth anniversary, we were finally going to tick off ONE. At this rate, I don’t know that we’ll ever finish. But it’ll be fun trying. Especially if everywhere is as pretty as Liechtenstein.
To be pedantic, only the parts of this picture on the LEFT side of the river are actually Liechtenstein. But on the other hand, we LIKE being pedantic.
An absolute must do on this visit was to try the national dish of Liechtenstein, which we have previously attempted to make right here on this blog. And at a restaurant in Triesenberg, with this amazing view of the Rhine valley, we had the chance to do just that.
My heavens. This was fantastic. Big pile of cheesy dumplings with crispy fried onions. What is not to like, I ask you?
We each ordered a serving, and neither of us was able to finish, although we made a valiant effort.
At this point it was time to walk to our evening accommodations. It was about a mile, and we were growing increasingly concerned by the weather.
You could SEE the rainstorm walking down the valley towards us. It was really spectacular. It was going to feel a lot LESS spectacular when it started dumping water on us…
…except it never did. It passed slightly higher up the mountain and spared us, allowing us to arrive perfectly dry at our yurt.
But why were we at a yurt in Liechtenstein? Well, that’s a story for the NEXT post.