Feniculi fenicular

Greetings to you all from Lucerne. It has turned into a lovely afternoon as we put this together on this Mother's Day eve. A good night's sleep after the train journey yesterday prepared us for our orientation around Lucerne and then a fenicular trip up to the Stanserhorn. The first photo (out of order) isthe view from the lookout across to Sydney (16,000km away). But before that we visited the Lion Memorial which is in memory to the many Swiss mercenary soldiers who died as a result of the French Revolution. It was in fact hard to look at the lion and not weep with it when you looked at its face. But,back to the Stanserhorn, this was a cable ride part way up the mountain and then a transfer to a car lift. Once upon a time there used to be a rail road to the summit but the cable got hit by lightening and it was diffilcut to maintain the track in the winter. But there is also a winding walking track and they have a race each year to get to the top. What a view as if standing on top of the world, but we were only about 2000m above sea level - about the same height as Mt Kosiusko! and these other massive peaks still towering above us. We also met up with a native little anim,al - a marmet, like a wombat with a squirrel face. The cloud came over in waves but it was still magical - also another opportunity to throw some snow! We have spent the afternoon walking the town, across the very old wooden covered bridge, up onto city walls and walked the ramparts as well as climbing two of the towers, one still containing a working clock and a large bell. Being Switzerland, watch and clock shops abound, also shops containing a million varieties of Swiss pocket knives. It is also an area for wood carvings, found in the decorations on the houses, but also in other carvings - the one of the eagle costs about 8000 franks (about $9000AUD) and there were others of course cheaper and even more expensive. There are also flowers abounding now that spring is here. This has been an opportunity to try the camera on the close up mode and how wonderful it is in terms of clarity of detail - fascinated by the white tulip as well as some other close ups of wild flowers up on the mountain. We are out for dinner tonight for our farewell dinner and we have been given our tickets to get us from Lucerne to Zurich tomorrow where we will be at the Continental Hotel for the night and then we are on our own for most of this week as we make our way via Milan and Venice across to Vienna. Auf wiedersehn to you all.