Lucerne is a city of 2 halves the old and the new. It sits on the edge of Lake Lucerne. Both old and new buildings are multi storey surrounding the lake. Turrets are common in the old area and thre is a suprising amount of grassed and forested areas on the hills surrounding the lake.
An old stone wall with 7 towers marks the perimeter of the old town, and there are lots of bridges across the river leading into the lake. Today was our day on foot to have a look around the old city. There were lots of fruit, vegetable and flower markets along the Lakeside, and in the shopping areas it seemed like there were chocolate and pastry shops everywhere. The language is very similar to German, and with a year learning German in college I'm finding it not too difficult to understand the basics - much more so than I found Italian to be - which does make things a little easier.
We saw some really really long buses today - a bit like 3 all joined together, which was unusual.
We visited the Natural Museum and saw an impressive display of insects, crystals and geology, taxidermy of bird and waterlife as well as an exhibit on Wolves which after a long time are starting to come back into Switzerland. This was another great interactive learning experience - the Swiss do these so well. One of the benefits of bringing kids to Europe is going to places like that which we might not have gone to without them. (There is a flip side too, but we won't mention that yet - it's only week 1 after all).

We walked alongside the old stone wall and went up into two of the towers. One was a clock tower and had several large old pendulum clocks in it - the main clock in the tower had a pendulum that hung two stories below. After a picnic lunch beside the wall we walked to a lakeside park for a swim and a long rest under the trees. A lovely way to relax and ease our feet in the water - the weather again has been stunning.

Tomorrow we head to Brienz - our base for 5 nights from which we will make day trips to several of the mountainous villages in central Switzerland.

Scott: The swimming was fun. I buried myself in the sand and April and Sarah made the sand look like a mermaid's tail.

Sarah: It was fun trying to make sandcastles.

April: The water was beautiful, perfect temperature.