I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?

Saturday Aug. 26th:

We wake up around 9 today, and split up pretty much immediately. Half the group had planned to go to Luzern with me, while the other half wanted to go to Interlaken to spend their Saturday and Sunday.

After saying our goodbyes, the six of us left took a day tour of Zurich shortly after checking out of the hotel. I was the appointed picture taker, so I missed a lot of the dialog, but I got some sweet pics of the city. Here are some personal favs.























After a quick lunch downtown post-tour, we all hopped on the train to get to Luzern by the late afternoon. We were told by another member of our group (back at the villa)that someone had said this city was the most beautiful they had ever seen, and I think I would agree, if it weren't for the pouring rain we saw when we arrived. It was that way the whole visit, unfortunately. But, that wasn't going to stop me from exploring. I figured I'm only going to be there once for a very long time, so regardless of the weather, I'm still going to make the best of my time. And I did just that.

After arriving in Luzern, we took the bus that hauled the 6 of us to a stop that supposedly was where our hostel was. It wasn't at all. We walked around in the rain for about 15 minutes before a very nice employee of the Youth Hostel we were staying at was walking back to it from her car. It took us about another 10 min. just to get to the hostel. We walked down this massive hill and several different sets of stairs to get there, and decided that without this kind lady guiding us we probably would not have found it.

The hostel was I think a very different experience for the boys than it was for the girls, but I'll get to that later. After unpacking our bags, we headed back downtown for dinner, and while we were there, everyone decided that they were really too exhausted to do much more. That, and the fact that it was still raining really hard didn't help sway their decision. But for me, I told them I would meet them back at the hostel later that night, and wandered the city on my own. The greyness really wasn't helping the image all that much, but you could still see a lot of the city's true colors at night despite the nasty weather.

I wanted to see everything, and ended up getting lost about 3 times down the winding roads leading up to the hostel, but definitely got the extra paces worth of pictures. I just wish it would have been a biiit clearer that night and next day. I even saw a hedgehog for the first time ever on one of the streets! My batteries were dead by that time, but here's a good one from the night of wandering Luzern


The city is lined with 5 (or so) castle peaks like that one and would have made for some really neat exploring, but they were closed for the night by the time I got to them. After taking lots of twists and turns I finally meandered my way back to the hostel for the night.

OK, back to the hostel experience. The rooms are set up like 20 bedroom dorms, all same sex rooms, with bunk beds lining the walls. I myself had no trouble going to sleep, because I literally passed out from walking around so much when I came back to my bed. Now that was in the guys room, but when talking to the girls later Sunday morning, they said their stay was quite unpleasant, mostly because of the other girls in the room with them, and the sheets the hostel provided bothered them. I think maybe had I been less tired at the time I might have noticed, but it really didnt phase me at all. I sure hope they caught back up on their sleep when we got back to Riva.

Movin' on to Sunday (anything but a sunny-day)in Luzern...

Keep on keepin' on peacefully,

B Ezie