May 22nd was a photographic disaster.
I woke up about 06:00 in Grindelwald. As soon as I opened the drapes I knew it would be a bad day. The cloud deck was hovering just above the roof tops and it was raining.
I had a light breakfast because the weighing scales had delivered bad news.
The coach departed at 09:00 but the Nikon stayed in my back pack. There was no sense trying to shoot through rain-splattered coach windows into a grey mass whizzing by.
We arrived in Interlaken by 09:45 and were given an hour to enjoy the highlights. I wandered in the rain under my umbrella trying to find something to shoot with my Lumix TS4 waterproof. I tried some lilacs and some rain-soaked table tops with artistic merit. It was 13 Celsius, but in the rain it felt colder.
I have yet to see the Jungfrau on this trip. The closest I got was a visit to the five star Victoria Jungfrau hotel, where I made a beeline for the posh toilets. In case you don’t know, the trick is to march in boldly as if you own the place.
By 10:45 we were back on the coach and driving towards Sachseln. We drove east along the shore of the Brienzersee, but the clouds were so low that no mountains could be seen. Then we started climbing up to the Bruenigpass where we hit fog and even less visibility. At 3,336 feet we crossed over the top of the pass into Zentral Schweiz.
At 11:22 we pulled off the mountain road into a small parking space. The Tour Manager and Swiss guide broke out almond cake and wine. It was an excuse to lighten things up a bit.
At 11:50 we stopped at a lookout point with a view of the Lungernsee, which is the water reservoir for the hydroelectric operation. Only one guest went out to take a photo in the rain.
Then we descended through Giswil and ran beside Lake Samen for a short distance.
At 12:15 we pulled into the parking lot at the train station at Sachseln. We walked in the rain to the nearby Gasthof when a Swiss man in full regalia came out of his house with an Alpine horn. His first number was the kissing cousin of ‘The Last Post’. It was a rather nice touch.
Crammed into the Gasthof, we soon learned that we would be entertained by two children. The boy played a small squeezebox while the girl handled the clarinet. They played and they played: then they played some more. At a brief respite, the man with the Alpine horn brought it inside to make sure we could hear his tunes. Anybody who suffers from tinnitus or wears hearing aids knows that this was all pure agony.
I am still debating whether bagpipes or an Alpine horn is worse when played indoors. My ears are still ringing as I write.
The meal was a very good cheese fondue. There was enough to feed a company of soldiers. Like the music, it just kept coming. We had barely lowered the level in one pot when a second appeared.
At 14:12 we drove off to Luzern, a city of 60,000 people, passing beneath the unobservable Pilatus that guards the approach to the city.
Parking the coach in the Schwannenplatz, just off the main bridge, we walked in the rain to observe the ‘Dying Lion’ monument.  It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in ParisThen we walked back to Schwannenplatz and over the wooden Chapel Bridge. The flowers had only just been installed in the planters that line the length of the span. Frankly, it looked bedraggled.

Once across the bridge we walked to the Jesuit Church. We finally walked to the Radisson hotel that is very close to the main railway station.

My room looks out onto Lake Luzern and I think there are some old style steamers moored nearby – if the visibility improves I might be able to confirm that.
Mercifully, the 19:00 dinner was a buffet. I was very careful to limit the damage.
Thus ended a very disappointing touring day. The Nikon D5200 is in shock.

Return to 2013 Photos    http://www.ironsides.net/IronTrip/2013_Photos.htm