Lucerne and the Alps

Part one in a series....

We shoved off on a Friday and got to Lucerne, Switzerland at about 5. Had a little time to look around at the shops but we were knocked out by how beautiful the scenery was. Lucerne is the first point at which you start to REALLY see mountains as you drive south from Germany. It sits on a large lake and is very quaint with a good sized old town that has many squares and alleys.

The Reuss river that runs out of the lake splits Lucerne in two and there are a few bridges crossing between. The most famous of which is the Kapellbruecke (Pics below). It was built in 1333 originally although what is there now is a product of a restoration that occurred after the bridge was nearly destroyed by fire in 1993.

The "Dying Lion" is carved in sandstone out of the side of a nearby hill. We just sat there and looked at it for a bit of time as it is very moving. It's a monument to commemorate the Swiss that died in the French Revolution in 1792.. Mark Twain called it "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world."

We didn't give Lucerne enough time on this trip and will return in the future as we had to move on the next morning and drive to Nice. We decided to take the scenic route since our Navigation warned us of impending traffic at the "quick" crossing.

We are glad that it did.

We ended up crossing over a bit west of the main Alps crossing at teh Gotthard Tunnel. We were over near the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc (the highest mountain in Europe for you geography majors). It was beautiful. Different than crossing the Rockies as I've done with my family a few times. There seemed to be more dams and streams, even at 10,000 feet. The air got really thin at the top and Kelli and I were both pretty lightheaded. The lightheadedness probably made seeing some glaciers even that much more cool however.

Our Hannibal-esqe crossing took about 6 hours as we stopped quite a bit for pics and took our time with the drive. Not that we had much of a choice at times. We definitely did not take the roads most travelled. At least two times we had to question whether or not we had made the right turn.

We descended into the area of Italy between Milan and Torino (Turin, depending on where you're from), and headed south to the Sea near Genoa. We drove west along the Italian Riviera for about 2 hours getting to Nice. It reminded me a lot of the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway in California, only the Italians blasted tunnels through every jutting mountain instead of riding the contours like the PCH. It was gorgeous nonetheless. After a slight traffic jam at the French border, we zipped through Monaco and on to Nice. Total trip time from Lucerne to Nice, 7.5 hours.

Part two later today as I was lazy over the weekend. Kelli and I enjoyed our last summer weeeknd in Wiesbaden. Friday we were out with some friends and Saturday we headed to Frankfurt to catch a movie (Miami Vice - pretty good) and dinner. Sunday was a perfect day so we walked into the city and also rented a boat in the park behind the house. It was a good "calm before the storm" for me.