I woke up about 6:15 AM again today, having had a pretty good nights sleep. We had done a small load of wash last night and let it run while we slept, so this morning I dried that load. The combo washer/dryer is nice, but it is really slow. A wash cycle takes about 2 hours, and drying time is not much less. We have been trying to do a small load everyday so we are at our full compliment of clean clothes, taking full advantage of having the washing machine. After looking at our reservations, we found that our next stay with a washer is our very next stop in Grindelwald, so today will be our last day of washing here.
Our original apartment in Lucerne, which we had cancelled right before we left to avoid the possibility of paying cancellation charges if we had not been allowed to travel to Switzerland, did not have a washer. We specifically had selected an apartment at our second stop in Grindelwald thinking we would have had several days worth of dirty clothes by the time we got there from Lucerne. It may seem that it was a waste to do as much laundry as we did here, but with our past and present luck with inoperable washers, who knows if the next one will work.
While I was checking my email, I noticed we had received one from the Glacier Express train company, and it included some changes to the Covid protocols that were being implemented by the Swiss Health Organization, effective Monday, September 13, 2021. The email stated that under the new protocols, only passengers with valid Swiss Covid Certificates would be allowed to board the train. Certainly, we thought we would be able to use our CDC issued proof of vaccination, but to be sure, I sent them an email for clarification.
We did not have any real plan for today, so I worked on yesterday’s blog post while Stephanie slept in a little. As I had predicted yesterday, today’s weather, at least this morning, was clear and sunny, with only a few high clouds. I was a little disappointed that we had not saved the trip to Mt. Titlis for today, but the weather forecast two days ago had not called for sunny weather today, it had forecasted worse weather than yesterday.
After Stephanie woke up, we decided that we would visit another mountain top nearby, Mt. Rigi. I looked online and found we could purchase a combo ticket that included transportation on a Lake Lucerne ferry to the town of Vitznau, and then a cog rail trip to the top of the mountain. There were also several side trips from Mt. Rigi via cable carts that were included in the pass.
We had a little difficulty purchasing the tickets online, due to credit card verification requirements. The first card we tried, CapitalOne, required text verification by my USA phone number. That was not going to work with our French SIM cards. (Footnote: I later learned that we could receive text messages sent to our original phone numbers since text messages are sent through data, not directly through cell service). Next, we tried a Costco Citi Card, and it worked fine, no text verification was needed. We ate a quick breakfast from items we had purchased from the grocery. We were on a tight schedule to make the next hourly ferry departure at 10:12 AM. We got everything ready, loaded up the PDF ticket confirmation onto our cell phones that included scannable QCR Codes, and off we headed to the Ferry Terminal across the street from the Train Station.
The information on how to exactly use the tickets was a little vague, we were not sure if we needed to use the ticket confirmations we had at the ferry terminal ticket office for a separate ferry ticket, or if that was our ticket. We waited in a short line and I spoke to a ticket agent who confirmed the confirmation we received by email was our tickets to both the ferry and train to Mt. Rigi, and they could be used directly on the ferry.
Views From The Ferry
We boarded the ferry and looked for seating outside and found an open bench on the side of the large ferry boat. It was an enjoyable ride, although most people sitting outside were not wearing any masks, but some were, as well as ourselves. The issue was more that we could not keep any type of social distancing with the close proximity seating, but at least for most of the ride, excluding the several stops along the way, the boat was moving and air was circulating.
The ride to Vitznau was about 55 minutes long, and we arrived on time. Most of the people on the ferry were also heading to Mt. Rigi, and so it took a little while for everyone to get off of the ferry boat.
Ready for the Ride Up Mt. Rigi
The Rigi Cog Rail cars were right next to the ferry terminal, so after waiting in line behind the people who got off of the ferry ahead of us, we had our tickets scanned and boarded the cog rail cars. There were plenty of seats, they actually used two different trains, one was already full ahead of us. Each train was about five cars long.
In our rush to get seated on the train, I did not think about which side would be better for photos, but we quickly found out it was not the side we were on. The lake was on the other side of the train as we ascended up the mountain. However, we knew we could get seats on the other side on the trip back down, so no worries.
It was quite a long trip to the summit, almost an hour. We stopped at several small stations along the way, these were mostly being used by hikers. There were extensive hiking trails on the mountain that we could see as we went upward.
Cog Rail Cars to Mt. Rigi
We finally reached the summit and got off of the train. We headed up to the very peak for some photos. We were planning to take some tripod photos and when we went to set it all up, we discovered two things. One, I had not brought the remote shutter control with us today, but that was not an issue, we could use the camera’s timer. The worst was that I had forgotten that I had removed a small adapter from the tripod when we had taken our short trip to the NC mountains last November. I had not checked out all of the camera gear before we left, and now we were paying a price for the lack of preparation. Fortunately, I found a way to connect the camera directly to the tripod, but without the tripod ball attached. Without the ball, I had no easy method of adjusting the camera angle other than moving the tripod legs up or down to get the camera level.
Tripod Photo – Harder Than Normal
We took a few photos, but it was much harder that it should have been. We knew there was a nice camera store in town, we had passed by it yesterday. We planned on going there later today to see if I could get an adapter to make it all work. Hopefully they would still be open when we got back to Lucerne. (Footnote: Once we were home from this trip, we found out that there was nothing missing from the tripod, the screw on the top had two sizes of threads, and I had not seen that we just needed to extend the screw out enough to get to the larger threads that fit the tripod ball)
There were some cows next to the paved trail that we were taking back down to the station, and Stephanie wanted a picture with them. They were behind a wire fence and when Stephanie squatted down to get next to the cow’s face, she stumbled and touched the wire fence with her shoulder. Of course, it was an electrified fence, and she got a small shock. Luckily, it touched her shoulder where her shirt was and not on bare skin, but startled her none the less.
Stephanie’s “Electric” Cow
Stephanie’s New Friends
There were also two goats on leashes that we went to visit, well Stephanie went to visit. They were pets, and were both inside and outside pets according to their owner. Of course, Stephanie had to take more photos with them
We needed to get a bite to eat, so we headed to the restaurant near the cog train station. It was sort of a cafeteria, and they had several selections of meals.
Our Lunch on Mt. Rigi
We picked out two bottles of beer to have with our lunch, and we both ordered the sausage, a type of Brat, and a side of Pommes Frites (French Fries) that came with it. Just a small CHF 50.00 lunch. Once we got to a table to eat, we discovered we had actually purchased alcohol free beer. Of course, the label was in German, so we did not notice it right off when we selected them. They had a great flavor!
We were about halfway done with our meal when the next train arrived at the upper station. We knew from the schedule that it was set to depart 10 minutes after arriving for the ride back downhill. We sort of wolfed down the rest of our lunch because if we missed this train it was another hour before the next one departed.
Once we were on the train, we looked at the schedule for the cable car that was part of the ticket and was accessible from one of the intermediate stops on the ride down. Unfortunately, it was going to be too tight on time to stop and take the cable car down to another town, ride it back up and then get back on this train to ride to the bottom at Vitznau to catch the ferry boat back to Lucerne. We were on a tight schedule because we were planning to go to Catholic Mass in Lucerne at 5:30 PM.
Views Of Lake Lucerne Riding Down to Vitznau
Instead of getting off mid mountain, we just rode back down to Vitznau for the next ferry boat back to Lucerne. At least this gave us time to get to the camera store without worrying if they would be still open.
The train and ferry were well coordinated, it was just a few minutes from the time the cog train arrived at the bottom in Vitznau until the next ferry boat arrived. We boarded and were able to sit outside in the bow area for the ride back. We met some folks there, one of which was a tour guide from the UK. He was guiding a group of 22 Americans, and Lucerne was the last stop on their 12 day trip. We had a nice chat about travel with the guide.
Once we were back in Lucerne, we headed to the camera shop, just a short walk from the ferry terminal. Initially the girl helping us there was struggling to understand what I needed. Then another person came over, looked at the issue, and immediately found an adapter to make the tripod function again. It was different from the original, at least from what I remembered, but it did the trick and only cost CHF 2.00.
With that taken care of, we headed back to the gift store we had visited the other day to ask about the ceramic crowned frogs. It was indeed the correct store, but they were sold out except for one that was a coin bank. The lady suggested we go over to the train station to the florist shop. We had actually seen them in there the other day when we took the train from the station to Mt. Titlis, but had not stopped in.
Once we arrived at the florist shop, we saw that they did have the frogs Stephanie was looking for, and we also discovered that they were all coin banks, we had just not seen the coin slot on the ones at the hotel, they were up on a shelf and we had not seen them that closely. Stephanie purchased a small green version for a souvenir.
Hydro Plant on the Reuss River
Next we headed back to cross the other wooden bridge in Lucerne near the hydro plant on the river, the Spreuerbrücke. It was sort of on the way back to the apartment anyway. The small black flying bugs were still in full force by the river again today.
The Spreuerbrücke
We headed back to the apartment to rest a little before Mass. I showered since I had been wearing a ball cap for the ferry ride home while we were out in the sunshine. We headed to Mass about 5:10 PM. The website for the church had pretty strict Covid rules and one of them was that only 39 people were allowed into the small church with social distancing rules in effect, so we wanted to make sure we were there early. It ended up that this was not an issue, there were only about 20 people there in total by the time the Mass started. The Mass was in English, and we appreciated that. Apparently the priest saying Mass today was visiting from another church based on comments made during the announcements.
After Church, we thought we would go ahead and find a place to eat since it was Saturday, and there would most likely be a lot of people eating out. We checked out a few menus and looked again at a pizza place we had tried to eat at the other night but because it had been rainy, their outside seating area had been closed. We looked at the menu on the restaurant doorway and then went around the corner to find out that they were not using the outside seating tonight either, probably due to a short rain shower we had earlier. We headed back to the restaurant to see about eating inside, and saw that no one was there eating yet, they had just opened. We asked about a table and were given the last one that was not reserved. Right after we were seated, several other people came in and were turned away because they had no reservations. Our waitress was great, and we had the best service, we were the only ones inside the small restaurant for most of our meal.
Dinner Time
We ordered a pizza and a pasta dish and a bottle of wine. All were excellent and we enjoyed talking with our waitress, she had a great sense of humor. By the time we were finished with dinner, the restaurant was starting to fill up, but for us, it had been just as socially distanced and safe as eating outside, hardly anyone was inside during our meal.
We headed back to the apartment and looked at our email and found a response about our CDC vaccine card from the Glacier Express train company. Apparently, they would not allow us to travel on the train with only our CDC vaccine card, we were required to have a Swiss Covid Certificate, and the email indicated we could do a rapid antigen test to get one, or get a refund on our tickets.
We then spent the next hour looking online and found we could schedule appointments for 8:00 AM tomorrow for Antigen Tests. We though it would be better to do them here in a larger city before we left tomorrow. We were not sure what the testing capabilities would be in a smaller town like Grindelwald, our next stop. It was our belief that this would solve our problems for the remainder of the trip in regards to obtaining a Swiss Covid Certificate.
Once that task was done, we finished a little packing so we would have less to do in the morning. We called it a night at about 10:00 PM