Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Reuss Valley

Lake Luzern - Switzerland

Our wake up call on Saturday morning came at 6am. It was a short night, but the bed was comfortable, and we both rested well. We took breakfast in the hotel, and enjoyed talking with our very chatty waitress, before we took the two minute walk to the nearest train station.

We had stayed the night before planning our day, and trying to figure out which train to take to get to Zurich HB – the main Zurich train depot – where we would catch our train to Lucerne. When we got to the train station, we saw a train with one of the numbers we knew we could take to Zurich, so we hopped on. Once we were moving, though, we realized that we were heading north – away form the city and toward the airport. So, we took a five minute ride to the airport and then had to catch a different train from there to Zurich. At least it was an express train, so the whole detour didn’t cost us more than 15 minutes or so.

The train trip from Zurich to Lucerne was uneventful. Once in Lucerne we had to talk to an agent for the ferry because our reservation vouchers from the London Swiss Travel Center never arrived. The website we had looked at, and the Swiss Travel Center agent I had spoken to weren’t very clear about things. The agent explained that it was too late to make reservations for the William Tell Express train, but we could ride the ferry by just using our rail pass then take any unreserved seat on the train.

The lake cruise was three hours long and was definitely worth it! It was so beautiful, and made for some great photo opps! In Flüelen, our final ferry destination at the south end of Lake Lucernce, we had lunch at a local café. We shared what they called “The Big Plate”. It turned out to be a large wooden platter of local meat, cheese, and veggies. It was fabulous!

Travel Tip: When you’re traveling, don’t be afraid to try to local cuisine. You might be surprised, even if you don’t think you’ll like it.

We had a little time, so we checked out the train schedules. We realized that many of the trains going to Lucarno or Lugano had a panoramic car (panoramowagen in German, which I thought was funny) but the “William Tell Express” had more 1st class cars than the other trains, but it still had just one panoramic car. We had also been under the impression from the website, and the Swiss Travel Center, that there were only two trains each day, but we realized that they had one every hour or so. If it were really busy then it might have been difficult to get a seat on the panoramic car, but we didn’t have nay trouble at all.

The scenery during the train trip was beautiful, but it was difficult to take pictures through the window, so we just sat back and enjoyed the view as we traveled through the Reuss River Valley.

In order to take the train to either Lucarno or Lugano we had to change trains in Bellizona. We were tired, though, after having to get up early, so instead of switching trains just for another 20 minutes or scenery, we decided to catch a train back to Zurich instead. The view was just as spectacular, and we ended up in Zurich an hour earlier than we had originally planned. It was so nice to have a relaxing dinner and have some time to unwind before getting to bed early that night.