Gotthard Express & Uri the Paddle Steamer

So another flying visit, which is a shame as we liked Lugano and the hotel room we had was brill but on our way we went.  We had the usual buffet breakfast - but this time in a lake view room which was lovely - learnt some more Italian as everything was labelled in English and Italian.  It was one of the better breakfasts with lots of variety.

We then packed our bags and headed out towards the funicular.  I noticed a Co-op just behind it, so we went there first for drinks and lunch - a box of pasta salad each, then up we went in the funicular - a whole 2 minutes later we were back in the railway station.  We found our platform and waited for our train to arrive.  

Tom and Alfred

It was as lovely as we expected AND we were met by a very jolly gentleman, Markus, who very obviously was in charge of the carriage and enjoyed a crowd.  Now, I will remember this trip because of Markus, not because of the scenery or engineering we experienced (all of which was mind blowingly amazing).  Markus switched effortlessly from English to German explaining what we were seeing, but mainly he was a bit of a joker, a people person and a performer.  He asked everyone where they were from and changed his patter accordingly.  He also knew his stuff, a gentleman from Texas across the aisle from me asked many questions and Markus was able to answer them all.

Here you can see the track at 2 different levels...

Once again this was a regular railway - no rack and pillion here!  After ascending gently out of Lugano, past a number of castles, we then started to loop in and around the mountains.  We kept seeing the same scenery again and again but out of different windows and higher up each time.  It is amazing how they did this and how early it was when they did it - in the 1880s!  

We thought the Ribblehead Viaduct was impressive, but what these guys did was even better!  On top of all the mountain switch backs, they also built the longest train tunnel in the world (at the time) 15km in distance.  Markus took us through the history - apparently the 'lucky' people to build it were Italians from across the border, and they were treated very badly - had to live in cramped conditions where disease was rife, were paid very little and then made to pay the company back for any equipment they needed (eg lights) etc.  It's the same story the world over - with us it was the Irish navvies that were badly treated.

Tom 'working'

Tom and Markus - his boss!

The chief engineer for the project was a gentleman called Alfred Escher, however, he run out of money before the end of the project and was sacked, he died shortly after, so never got to ride on it or even be acknowledged for it - which seems to be the case so often for brilliant men ahead of their time.  Not to worry - he now gets to ride it every day as he is in the photography coach enjoying the ride - lovely touch!

As I said, the main man of the day was Markus and he made the journey feel about 30 minutes long.  He took a shine to Tom and made him help him out - handing out souvenir chocolates, he got paid - he got 4 extra chocolates and a special badge.  Tom was made up! We also got given souvenir ready paid postcards, so we wrote some out and handed them in, a bonus for the grandparents - a second post card each.  We were sorry to arrive at Flüelen and say goodbye to Markus - he got two very well deserved rounds of applause!

Cool sculpture at Flüelen

Flüelen

At Flüelen we connected with a paddle steamer, Uri, which took us along pretty much the full length of Lake Luzern.  It took 2hours 45 and was a lovely gentle way to travel.  First class on the boat was basically a restaurant...we took one look at the prices and laughed!  No way were we paying that, so we found ourselves a bench under a canopy and stayed there for the whole trip, eating our supermarket bought pasta salads for lunch!  We had been expecting rain today, but it didn't - for most of the ride the sun was out although it was much more cloudy than previous days.  It was very hot and muggy though! 

Tom really enjoyed watching the pistons and paddles on the steamer - it was an original from the US and looked a day old!  It is obviously much loved, and well looked after.  No grime anywhere, just shiny metal. We stopped at about 10 towns on the way to Luzern, all of which looked like holiday resorts with either lidos on the lake or funiculars or gondolas up to the mountains.  All very lovely in the sun.  

We arrived in Luzern at 2.45 and found the hotel without much trouble (no hills or cobbles - yay!)

We checked in, did some laundry, had some down time and then headed out for a bit of an explore (lovely 14th century covered wooden bridge right in the centre of town) and something to eat - decided to have something completely different today and ended up in a Thai restaurant which was both very reasonably priced (for Switzerland anyway) and delicious - all freshly prepared.  I had a red curry, Tom chicken wings and Matt Pad Thai.  We were all very happy with our choices.

As we were in the restaurant we heard claps of thunder and saw some lightning - it was extremely hot and muggy - it needed to clear...oh yes the rain came down and we had nothing suitable on us!  So we ran from the restaurant to Aldi on the shopping street - coldest we have been since we got here and it was blissful!  We bought some cheap beer in Aldi - recced it for lunch tomorrow (yes we will go there - so much cheaper than the regular supermarkets) and then headed to the hotel to chill out again.

We have a full day to ourselves tomorrow and have been wondering what to do with it, however, as we have had such full days recently, we have decided to (hopefully) sleep in, then see what the weather is doing, how much energy we have and go from there.  We might not do much - we need an easy day before we attempt to head home on Thursday (we have a strong feeling DB will cancel the train we are on from Frankfurt to Brussels, which will mean we might have to go round the houses to get to Brussels and therefore arrive very late (again!)