Lucerne

I cannot adequately describe Lucerne- it's that amazing. The city sits right on Lake Lucerne and is surrounded by the Swiss Alps to the south and Jura Mountains to the north. We spent the full day there yesterday, and we easily could have stayed all week. The good news is that it's only an hour from Basel (by train), so I'm sure we will be going again in the near future.

When we first arrived we went to the outdoor market, which is one of the many things I love about Switzerland. The markets here are quite charming, and every time I go I want to buy things I would typically never consider buying, like strange-looking sausages. I guess the markets are catered to suckers like me. We also took a steam boat on a two hour loop around a portion of the lake. Along the way the boat stopped at little port villages and allowed people to get on and off. We disembarked at one such port village and took a roller-coaster-like train car to the top of one of the mountain/cliffs overlooking the lake. I'm deathly afraid of heights and nearly passed out looking down, but luckily the ride wasn't too long. When we arrived at the top Sam said, "It's okay mommy, you can open your eyes now". Upon completing our boat tour and returning to Lucerne, we visited the Musegg Wall (the original city wall) and connecting towers. You can go climb the stairs inside of three of the towers, and again I nearly passed out for fear of the height and narrow stairs. I'm really going to have to get over this fear while we're living here.

Now for the photo overload- I really couldn't resist.

Look at the cheese at this stand! I am a cheese lover, but that middle one looked a little scary.

A picture of the steamboat which took us on our tour. It was foggy during the morning, so you could only see the outlines of the mountains. It was still beautiful.

*A little side note about Luke: A couple of days ago he was looking in the mirror and said, "Hey I lost a tooth too!" I think this was the first time he noticed the gap in his teeth. It made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

In the background below you can see the track which took us up the mountain.

I wish I could have captured how steep this was- this picture does not do it justice!

The view from the top

The cart taking us down

Luke at the city wall and tower

Andrew, Luke and Afton inside the tower.

Look at how narrow and steep these steps are. The middle was open and went all the way down to the bottom (we were at the top here). I was so tense that after we got down I had a shooting pain in my upper right leg. Don't worry- it went away after 5 minutes.