Paris to Switzerland

Paris to Switzerland

The glittering streetlights illuminated the silently flowing Seine as we climbed into our taxi at 5 a.m.  enroute to Gare du Lyon station to catch the first of our trains to Lucerne.  After a short wait we settled into our comfortable seats on the train.  Breakfast was served by a jovial young man.  It was a continental repast of cold cuts and cheese, a tasty crusty bread roll, yoghurt, orange juice, water and tea or coffee.  We were quite replete after.  We had decided to break our journey to Lucerne so we could see a little of two of the cities on the way.  Our first stop was Basel, just over the border of Switzerland and France.

Basel Rail Station

Self-explanatory in Basel

A clever way of wheeling bags or bikes down  stairs (modelled by Doug in Basel)

We had three hours in Basel before we picked up our journey.  We were able to leave our bags in a luggage locker at the station, at a cost of seven francs for each bag.  It also cost us two francs to spend a penny.  A penny isn’t cheap these days.  

Munster Cathedral

Armed with a map from the information centre, we set out on foot to explore Basel.  It was raining gently but not too intrusively as we walked.  The red-stoned Munster proved to an interesting example of a Calvinist style church, quite plain inside with very hard, straight-backed chairs.  The lady who greeted us was warm and friendly however.

Basel proved very easy to walk around and seemed to have more shoe shops than any town in the world. They all had sales but we didn’t have time to take advantage of the bargains.

The square outside Munster

Basel

A one hour train trip took us to Zurich.  The lockers at Zurich Station proved to be a larger size and also a larger cost – 9 francs each.  The rain fell steadily in Zurich so made walking quite uncomfortable.  We abbreviated our walk through Zurich’s highlights because we were wet and miserable in no time.  We did walk down to the harbour so had a little bit of an idea of what made Zurich tick.

Zurich

Zurich

Another short rail trip brought us to Lucerne (Luzern).  We were staying at a hotel a short walk from the station which proved to be very comfortable.  Although tired after such a long day, we went searching for dinner and found it at Mexican styled restaurant called Pacifica.