SUNDAY 1st JULY 2012

LUCERNE

First day of July! Where did June go????
Very glad to get on the bus this morning and get away from the dreaded Bon Alpina Hotel!
We drove a short distance to another little village and got onto a couple of large horse drawn wagons for a tour around some very old farms and the little town.
We passed houses that had been built six hundred years ago and were still lived in by locals and saw a dairy farm with about nine cows! When I asked about the size of the farms and the numbers of stock carried the old farmer said the average dairy herd was about seven and they also carried a few sheep or goats and cooks etc. so the good old subsidy system still carries on here despite the introduction of the EU, the only difference being that all the farmers now belong to co-operatives and are able to purchase better equipment and diversify a little more.
The whole morning was great fun, despite being a bit corny, and we were given coffee and a try of local fruit schnapps, which I reckoned would have powered the coach it was so strong!!!
Back on the coach we set out for Liechtenstein and a lunch stop in Vaduz, the capital. Only a tiny place of two and a half thousand people, it is a banking centre of the little country which lies on one bank of the Rhine River.
We had lunch a tavern - Sue and I having some Thai snacks - quite incongruous to have Thai in Liechtenstein!!!!! It was very nice too, and so was the beautiful banana split we shared for sweets! Another month on Weight Watchers!
Once back on the road we came across many tunnels on the autobahn, one in particular was over ten kilometres long! Amazing feats of engineering considering there are actually two tunnels side by side and big enough for two lanes of traffic each way! Plus there was phone signal the entire length!
By now the sky had become very dark and stormy and it looked like the heat wave was about to end. Sure enough about an hour down the road towards Lucerne the skies opened with a down pour, the temperature dropped from twenty eight to seventeen and our views of the Swiss Alps were hidden behind very low cloud!
Only the second of rain of our entire twenty five days so far. But it was blessed relief from the heat and when drove into the beautiful city of Lucerne we were happy to have a driven tour rather than walking in the rain.
The Lake was still very lovely despite the rain, the clear green water covered with white swans and ducks of all shapes and sizes. There were hundreds of boats moored all round the shore, both private and also large tour vessels.
Lucerne is a major tourist centre and the CBD was full of shops of all types - Victor warning us that prices for most items were very steep - something we found out for ourselves later!
Our hotel was very old and despite the initial impressions it turned out that our rooms were quite OK, basic but quite comfy, and thank heaven it had cooled down because there was no air conditioning!
Mumsie did some washing and once that was done we rested a while before following Victor to see a local monument nearby and then found a nice place to have dinner. The four of us had decided not to do the optional dinner and show tonight and we thoroughly enjoyed a peaceful meal on our own.