24 Hours in Luzern

First impressions. This is exactly what I imagined a traditional Swiss city to be. When a conection change forced me to switch my arrival city from Genève to Zurich, my first question was, should I stay in Zurich for the night before moving on? I’m glad I didn’t. A direct train from the airport and an hour later I set foot in one of the most picturesque cities you could ever want to see. The best part was as I was arriving I could see the front entrance of my hotel from the train. Perfect. Exactly what I wanted for a quick layover here. Nice and easy entrance and exit.

Of course nothing is ever perfect. And wouldn’t you know it, the heavy rains that have caused such devastation to both Germany and Belgium have also impacted Luzern. Not remotely to the same extent of course, but enough so that the banks of Lake Luzern have overflowed causing a partial closure of the waterfront and most, except one of the bridges that connect both parts of the city.

For my purposes all this meant was a little bit more walking around to get to where I wanted and having to find alternative lunch plans when I realized my original options were, well…under water. Ok, Plan B. “Are any of the lakefront terraces open? Ah. Yes. There’s one. It looks lovely. Let’s check it out.” Gotta say, Plan B should have been Plan A from the start.

It’s not my inclination to go to Italian restaurants outside of Italy. It’s just not my thing. And since I was in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, I was planning to go to a Swiss-German spot. Enter La Terraza. Unlike the many tourist trap mass patios that lure in the crowds, La Terraza has a discreet entrance off a side street which takes you down into a stone cellar, before coming up into the restaurant and a private terrace. Heaven. The perfect place to enjoy one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had (steak pizza is a thing!!), along with a glass or two of Nero D’Avola.

Traveling in the time of Covid-19

For one thing, there are no Americans. Like none. Well, there’s me and a table of three I walked past at a cafe at some point. Other than that, I can safely say, for now, Luzern belongs to the Swiss. The Swiss-Germans specifically. Except for one or two occasions, I heard nothing except German being spoken. Or shall I say Swiss-German. Kind of like Quebecois French I couldn’t understand a word of it. But I digress.

Don’t get me wrong. The Old Town was quite busy, and I’d guess most were visitors. But I got the sense they were likely day trippers from the region.

It was a bit strange to be honest. Though maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. When landing at the airport it was utterly empty. Ours appeared to be the only flight arriving at that time. I went through passport control, customs, picked up my luggage, withdrew cash, bought my train tickets and walked over to the train platform in 45 minutes flat. That has to be some kind of record for a European airport.

When arriving in Switzerland one of the things I was curious about was how similar or different the current situation would be to ours in the U.S, especially since Europe’s lockdown was much stricter and went on for much longer. Indoor dining re-opened here June 1st. And the outdoor mask mandate (yes, outdoors), was lifted less than three weeks ago, on July 1st. Masks are still required in all indoor spaces unless dining. No exceptions. Seems fair seeing their vaccination effort is behind ours. Other than that, everything seems pretty normal. Everything is pretty open. I’m curious to see if this holds in both France and Italy. I guess I’ll soon find out.

Onto Genève, where hopefully my French will be more useful than my German.