Getting to Lucerne

So this morning started off well. I set my alarm for 6:00am, so I would have plenty of time to shower and eat breakfast before catching my train at 7:54 am, but I woke up at 7:00 am instead (that’s what I get for staying up late). I quickly debated just taking a later train, but it would take much longer. The next train for Lucerne left at 8:56am (about an hour later than mine), but the trip took an hour longer, about 5.5 hours instead of 4.5. Not only that, but I would have four different stations where I would have to transfer, so I decided to try and make the early train, which has only one transfer in Zürich.

I quickly packed my things and headed to reception about 10 minutes after I woke up. I paid my bill, 111 Euros for three nights, and then took the elevator to the ground floor and quickly walked to the train station. About 15 minutes later, I arrived at the station around 7:25 am, in plenty of time to catch my train. I got a quick breakfast in the terminal and then went out on the platform to wait. I’m disappointed that I’m leaving Innsbruck today – the weather today is incredible with bright blue skies and not nearly as much haze as yesterday. The weather in Lucerne is expected to be good too, but only for the first couple days. Thursday and Friday is expected to be sunny, but Saturday and Sunday it is expected to rain (which is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to lose an hour on a pretty day).

The train ride to Zürich was nice and scenic – and I remembered to sit on the left side of the train, as it would face south towards the Alps as we were heading west. I took some pictures on the way to Zurich, but eventually caught up on some sleep.

I switched trains in Zürich and rode another 45 minutes until I got to Lucerne. I had the train mostly to myself.

After withdrawing some Swiss francs from the ATM, I started walking north. I made a rookie mistake and didn’t save a map onto my phone of where the hostel was, but I knew it was north of the train station. I figured pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to find it, so I found the closest McDonald’s to use their wi-fi. Using my iPhone, I found it about ten minutes later.

Problem was that reception didn’t open until 4:00pm, and it was 1:30pm when I got there. I wasn’t going to just sit around and wait, so I got lunch to break a 100 Swiss franc note, so I could use the lockers with a 2 Swiss franc deposit.

When I returned from lunch, I saw reception was open early, so I went ahead and checked in. After paying in advance and putting my stuff in my room, I headed towards the lake to take some pictures. The water is much clearer than I remember from my first visit, and there seems to be a lot more people enjoying the lake (probably because my first trip was in mid-May, and the water was still a little cold).

I spent the rest of the day taking pictures and wandering around the river.

I think tomorrow I am either going to Mt. Pilatus or renting a boat to take out on the lake. They have paddle boats and motorboats, but because the motorboats cost more than double (€40 for one hour instead of €17), I’ll probably just rent a paddle boat instead. I’ll be jumping off the boat and going swimming, so I’ll definitely need to find some sun screen for tomorrow. And I’ll probably take my camera with me too, so hopefully I don’t tip the boat over.