Euro Holidays – Day 02 – Zurich*Lucerne

There is a 6 hour time difference between Singapore and Zurich. As usual, i got jet lag and woke up every hour at 1am till 4.30am ( Zurich Time ) . Instead of forcing ourselves back to sleep again , we decided to make an early trip to the flea market. there is flea market every weekend in the city centre .

7am streets are still relatively quiet. the trains frequency are also slower in the morning. maybe it is because today is Saturday and is a non working day ?

The flea market is huge but we didn’t get anything because most of the stuff are silverware and winter clothing and we don’t know how to communicate with the locals!! Most of them speak German, Italian and French since the country is surrounded by these 3 countries.

11 am went to the railway station and used the Swiss pass and board the train to Lucerne. The Swiss pass enable you to purchase a x number of days pass where you can just hop onto the trains “free”. You can get it at the Dynasty Hub in Singapore.  You can go to the website to do some research first. it is quite comprehensive. there are direct trains and trains u need to change so we of course took the direct one to save us trouble. The timing is very accurate so you just have to plan based on what you see on the information screen.

took us about 50 minutes to reach Lucerne from Zurich. the hotel is about 10 mins walk from the train station. Hotel flora is located in a very good location. chapel bridge is just behind it and the city centre is just across the Lucerne bridge. They serve damn good breakfast ( included in the room rate ) too. Since food is so expensive in town, we took a very very heavy breakfast before we start our day.

To me, Lucerne looks very like Zurich but is more crowded maybe cos is a Saturday.

2 pm

walk around and took some photos around the atrractions and riverside. There are a lot of photo hotspots in that area we took our time to check it out. The night view is also very beautiful. It happen to be Mid Autumn Festival where we are there so the moon is big , round and bright. Sad thing the europeans dont celebrate them so there isnt any mooncakes for sale.

I went to bucherer and bought a Swiss knife for 78 chf. Bucherer isnt famous for knives. They are famous for selling watches.   Not sure if I were use the knive though but if you don’t get one when u reach Switzerland is like missing something. The Bucherer store in Lucerne is the biggest their so call flagship store. They have about 3 levels and you will be greeted by chinese sales staff . Dont be surprised because most of the customers they get are chinese tourists really. They buy expensive watches like we buy hamburgers. I saw price tags of $100k CHF on some of them. That will be about $140k SGD.

If u ever go to Swiss you have to get the Swiss knife. I reached Italy and regretted I shd get a few more as gifts. They make very nice and presentable gifts and you get free engraving service in most tourist shops. The pricing is more or less the same, i checked a few and they are simliar. However if you visit interlaken , there is a nice little shop there that sells almost every single swiss knife by Victorinox and Wenger which i strongly recommend. The boss is friendly and speaks relatively good english.

 
Macdonald is freaking expensive here . big mac meal upsize is 12 francs. tats about 18 sgd !! The meal below costs almost 24 sgd in Lucerne

as usual went back to hotel for a nap at around 4pm due to jet lag and we over slept again. finally figure out how to use shutter to control the lighting. the night shots are very beautiful!! check them out!