We said our goodbyes to the villa (not an easy thing to do because it was such an inviting place.). We also said goodbye to Patricia, letting her know what a gem she owns. She thinks it's way too old but that's one of the most charming things about Villa Vadana.

The scenery near Venice is fairly flat, as we drove towards Switzerland we could see imposing mountains.

We made a stop just across the border into Switzerland at an outlet mall. We thought we might find some good deals, but instead we found it overpriced.

The first mountains we came to were covered in dense trees. The scenery was lush, and every so often we would drive past an emerald colored lake. Further along we could see some mountains topped with snow. The drive was one of our longest - 5 1/2 hours. Including our two hour stop at the outlet mall, we didn't arrive in Lucerne until 8:00. We thought that the weather would be cooler but Lucerne was just as hot as Treviso! Over 30 degrees!

Our hotel was next to downtown. Rosli
Guest House was where we were booked in. Rösli Guest House is managed from it's sister hotel across the street, Hotel Baslertor.
During check-in it became obvious that our innkeeper was drunk. He had lost Tammy and Doug's reservation, and for some unknown reason our family was upgraded and moved over to Hotel Baslertor.

After some figuring, he put Tammy and Doug in the same building as us, and Deborah, Mila and Makenna across the street in Rosli Guest House.

The Hotel Baslertor is a cozy place, a small reception area with old leather furniture. It has a wide staircase winding up to the second floor. Our room happened to be the only room on the second level because the bar, sitting area, restaurant and outdoor patio overlooking the pool, take up the rest of the floor. The bar was closed with a sign saying it was the barmaids' day off (strange because it was a Saturday night). Because the bar was closed, the entire second floor was empty giving us a lot of room to hang out in. Our room was a lock off unit with two rooms. Our windows looked down on the street , through a break in the buildings we could hear and see the Reuss river rushing by.

It was late and we hadn't had supper yet so Deborah, Tim and Doug went out looking for food to bring back. Tammy and I stayed with the kids.
I was grumpy because Tammy's iPhone was picking up wifi and mine wasn't lol

The kids had fun cooling off in the pool. They had it all to themselves, and enjoyed using the 5 foot wall next to the pool as a spring board. We could hear the fun all through the 2nd floor.

Deborah, Tim and Doug returned and were over-the-top excited about the buildings, river and bridges. They said it was like something out of a fairytale. We shared supper in the bar area thinking it was funny that we had so much room available to us.

Tim insisted that I go for a walk with him to look around. It was dark but the streets were lit. We walked along the crooked roads, admiring the timber framed houses with neatly painted embellishments. The river shimmered reflecting the lights from the bridges and lanterns. A handful of other people were out enjoying the summer night - not a chill in the air, but still a reprieve from the hot day. Getting up close to the river we saw swans floating near the edge looking up at us to see if we had something for them. We crossed over the famous Chapel Bridge, a wooden footbridge; Europe's oldest wooden covered bridge, and the world's oldest surviving truss bridge, containing paintings dating back to the 17th century. No other wooden footbridges in Europe have this artistic feature. The paintings in the bridge are of historical events from Lucerne's past. The artist was using the paintings to promote the Catholic Church during the counter-reformation. Unfortunately most of the paintings were destroyed in a fire in 1993. Only 30 paintings could be restored out of the 147 that existed before the fire (originally there were 158 paintings but a few were destroyed even before the fire.). 2.1Million U.S dollars were spent to restore the bridge and its paintings. One other interesting fact about the bridge is that originally it was much longer, built in 1333, it was over 660 ft long and used as part of Lucerne's fortifications joining the old town to the new town, that were on opposite banks from each other. Over time different riverbank fortifications and bridge alterations resulted in the bridge only being 560ft in length today.

We wandered back to our hotel excited to look around in the daylight now that we had a glimpse of the area.