Continuation of our Heading to Switzerland Post…….
Once through Immigration and Customs, we headed to baggage claim. Stephanie headed over to the baggage claim carousel while I visited the restroom. By the time I was finished, Stephanie already had our bags. We took the opportunity to try out the cell phones, which required one restart because of the new SIM cards, but everything worked as advertised and we each received a text message confirming our new French numbers and our 12 Gb data allotment. I needed to use the cell phone to log into the SBB Train app and purchase our tickets for the train ride from the Zurich Airport to Lucerne, our first stop of the trip. SBB is the Swiss Train Company. Initially, I had trouble getting Stephanie’s ticket to come up for the Swiss Half Fare Card price, but I had not seen that I needed to check a selection box for any special reduction cards when I had added her to my passenger listing in the app. Once that was done, her ticket showed at the half fare price, as well as mine, and we made the online purchase. We were already at the platform area of the train station, which was next to the airport, and we only had to wait about 5 minutes for our train to arrive.
An announcement was made to inform everyone where the train would stop at the platform for First and Second Class train cars, so we headed to the second class designated zones. However, when the train stopped, for some reason, it was not far enough down the platform, and all the cars near us were for first class, so we, and a lot of other folks, had to scramble to the second class cars farther down the platform. We did not want to miss the train, they don’t stop for long at the station, so we got on the first second class car we came to and it was already full. Since these were double deck cars, we could not easily move to another car without going up and down some steps with our luggage. We just went to the open section between cars and waited for the next stop, which was in the Zurich Main Train Station, where a lot of folks left the train and we were finally able to get two seats.
We had a fair amount of time to go before we got to Lucerne, and I took this time to look at text messages and emails on my phone. I noticed that I had received a text and email from our Costco Citi Card about some potential fraud for charges for one of our apartments we are staying at in Austria later on in the trip. We knew that the payment was going to be charged on September 9, today, but could not figure out why we had gotten the fraud message. I spent a lot of time on the train ride trying to sort it out, but knew I was going to need to look at it online on my computer and possibly call Citi Card customer service once we arrived at our apartment in Lucerne. We sent some messages to the property owner’s explaining the issue, and notifying them that they might need to re-run the charge.
The Lucerne Train Station
The sunny weather we initially had in Zurich faded into cloudy weather as we approached Lucerne. The train was a little late arriving, we had to slow down for some wayward cows that had apparently blocked the track as we approached Lucerne.
Once we arrived inside the station, we headed outside and started our walk to the Apartment, which was part of an nearby hotel. On the walk to the apartment, it started to rain so we had to make a quick stop and get out our umbrellas out of the suitcases. Everyone on the train and inside the station were generally wearing their face masks, but not as diligently out on the platform outside of the station nor on our walk to the apartment. In general, these were outside areas, but at times, they were pretty crowded and people were not very socially distant. We kept our masks on most of the time, but took some relief in less crowded outside areas during our walk to the apartment.
Plaza Where Our Apartment Was Located
We arrived at the hotel with a little assistance from Google Maps and went to check in. Our apartment was ready even though it was only about 10:30 AM, which was great news. The apartment was located in another building across the small plaza from the hotel and after completing check-in we headed over to find the entrance. The entrance for the stairs up to the apartment was a little hard to find, we first tried to go into a store, but a man inside pointed us toward the entrance we needed for the apartments, which was on a small side alleyway. We found the entrance and then had to carry our luggage up two flights of stairs, ouch…..
The apartment was nice, but it was a little warm and humid inside without any air conditioning. Once we opened up some windows it cooled down a little since it was cooler outside. We also turned on two small fans to circulate more air. I spent some time trying to sort out the issue with the Costco Citi Card charges from Booking.com while Stephanie got our luggage sorted out and put away a few items. We noticed there was a small washer in the bathroom, and that was a combination washer/dryer. All of the instructions on the washer/dryer were in French, but there was a separate typed set provided by the hotel in English. This was very similar to a washer we had in Italy two years ago, and it worked about as well, well it really would not work at all, it kept giving us what appeared to be an error message.
We took some showers and felt much better afterward. We still could not get the washer to work and decided we would just go and ask about it at the front desk at the hotel across the plaza. We located a nearby grocery store on Google Maps and headed out to the front desk to inquire about the washer on the way to the grocery store. No one was at the front desk, so we left and headed to get some groceries first.
The store was a nice size Coop Store and we purchased several items. On the way back to the apartment, we stopped in at the front desk and the man at the desk apologized and told us he had forgotten to tell us that the washer/dryer was broken. He offered to put us in another room on the first floor, but I did not want that because of the possibility of street noise, which seems to always be an issue on the lower lever rooms, especially since we have to have the windows open for ventilation. In this case, the first floor was really the second floor since Europe designates the bottom floor as the ground floor, and the first floor is the next one up. He reluctantly then told us we could move one flight up and we agreed to do that. He offered to have someone assist us with moving our luggage, but we declined the offer, we did not really have that much to move.
We headed back to gather up our belongings. Luckily, we had not unpacked that much and within about 15 minutes, we had everything taken up the one flight of stairs. This apartment was a slightly different layout, and being higher up, got more of a cross breeze through it. And, it had a much simpler front load type of washer/dryer combo, not the small top loading horizontal drum type we still have never been able to get to work, not in Italy, and now, not here.
We got a load of laundry started, even though it was just our travel clothes, but why not. We had brought some laundry pods with us, so we might as well use the washer for the time we are here and keep as many of our clothes clean as we can. The washers are small anyway, so it does not take a lot of clothes to make a full load.
I was able to call Citi Bank and got the issue with the potential fraud worked out. This was the first time I had ever used the collect call feature for customer service when outside of the US, the 800 toll free numbers only work in the US. Somehow, the accommodation charge had been run twice by Booking.com, but had been successfully paid the first time. The second time it was denied. According to the customer service rep, everything should be fine with that reservation payment, which is for Hallstatt, Austria.
The Kapellbrücke
With the move completed and the laundry started in the washer, we ate some lunch consisting of bread, prosciutto ham and some cheeses we bought at the grocery. We had one small bottle of red wine from the flight and we drank that, celebrating finally being on vacation.
Once lunch was completed, we headed out to see some of the sights of Lucerne. We visited the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) and the Lucerne Jesuit Church.
Jesuit Church
While visiting the Jesuit Church, there was a small string ensemble practicing inside, we we sat and listened to them for several minutes. We then stopped off at a bank to get some Swiss Francs from the ATM.
Then we walked over to the Lion of Lucerne, which commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution. It is carved into a marble hillside. It was quite a walk over to the monument from where we had been.
Lion of Lucerne Monument
On the way there, we saw another much larger grocery store and went inside to check it out. We were pretty tired and leg weary from all of the walking and stair climbing, especially moving all of our luggage up to the new apartment. We saw some nice Arrabbiata spaghetti sauce and pasta in the store and decided we would cook in tonight, one of the benefits to having an apartment with a small kitchen. We packed the groceries into our backpacks and continued on to the monument.
Once we were done visiting the Lion of Lucerne Monument, we headed back to the apartment. Stephanie’s Galaxy Watch told us we had already walked over 15,000 steps today, and we could feel it in our legs. Once back inside the apartment, I worked on the blog posts for yesterday and today and Stephanie relaxed. We opened one of our bottles of Rose wine we had purchased at the first grocery that had been chilling in our small refrigerator. It was nice to relax and not to be wearing a mask.
We had a small issue with one of our small electric fans, the one which Stephanie had already taken over to the hotel to replace one that would not work when we arrived. The replacement fan did not work any better, it would barely run and made a squealing noise. They had told her to just text them through WhatsApp if we had any other issues, so she did, and they brought us a replacement fan later on, saving us from having to climb more up and down more stairs to go to the reception desk at the hotel across the street. This time, we checked the fan out before they left in case it was also defective, it worked fine
Our Quick Pasta Dinner
I started cooking dinner, and then realized that we had forgotten to get some red wine for our spicy pasta dinner, so Stephanie headed to the nearby Coop grocery store while I continued cooking. Everything in the kitchen work well, and we cooked our pasta and sauce, and heated our bread in the small oven. We have to say, dinner was quite tasty and we were glad to be relaxing and not dealing with trying to find a restaurant, we were just too tired from the long travel day.
Kapellbrücke Bridge at Night
We did head back out after dinner for a short walk along the Reuss River and passed quite a few restaurants that were really busy. Most all of the restaurants that are along the river have outside seating, and even the “inside” seating areas are really just an open covered area, not really totally inside. The issue with the outside tables was the smoking, which is allowed outside, but for us, can make outside dining miserable if someone is smoking nearby. Plus, the outside tables along the river are exposed to a constant stream of people walking by them just like we were doing!! Mask usage seemed to fade with the sunset, even though it was quite crowded. We made the loop around the river and across one of the bridges and we had enough “extra” walking for the day, our step total was now over 17,000, so we headed back to our apartment to relax and watch some TV, none of which was in English, as expected.
At about 9:30 PM, neither of us could keep our eyes open, so we headed to bed knowing we would sleep much better than we had on the airplane last night.