Saturday morning started off a little too early for my liking. But, it was the start of our free weekend and we were all ready to head out. We boarded the bus at 6:45 am and headed to the Baden Baden airport to drop off the various groups of people headed to Munich, Berlin, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. After dropping off everyone else, Lexi and I were dropped off at the Baden Baden train station that was only about 20 minutes away. We got our rail-passes authorized for our first day of rail travel and then waited for our train. At 9:17 am, we boarded our train for Basel, Switzerland and at 10:47 am, we arrived. It was crazy to see the scenery change before our eyes so drastically and more incredible was the fact that in 1.5 hours, we were in a totally different country with a totally different culture and a totally different landscape.
Once in Basel, we bought 2 bus tickets to get to the shopping part of the city. The buses ran frequently and we headed to the grocery store and bought sandwiches and yogurt for lunch. We ate on the stairs of the Basel Museum of History. Then, we walked around with our loads of luggage. I didn't bring that much but 2 bags is WAY too much to carry around in almost 80 degree weather in the sun. So, after our aerobic and weight-lifting workout, we got on another train at 2 pm and headed to Lucerne, our destination for the night. The train ride was an hour and we realized that we may have thought Basel was nice, but we were in for some more incredible things.
Lucerne sits right on the water and with the alps in the background, it is breathtaking. After asking about a hundred people (not really) for any bit of knowledge on the location of our B&B for the night, we found it after 1 mile of walking. The Pension Villa Maria truly was like staying at your grandma's house. It was a three-story, yellow house with a garden out back and our room was on the second floor. Lexi and I were SO happy to be somewhere where we could lie down so we hung out in our room for a while. Then, per Lexi's suggestion, we asked Maria (the 70 to 75 year old owner of the Pension) about a restaurant called the Stadtkeller. Maria made reservations for us that included a four-course meal and a 2-2.5 hour show including all of the Swiss traditions.
At 7:00 pm, we walked the mile to the Stadtkeller Restaurant. Our meal consisted of a Swiss cheese fondue with bread, salad, Swiss rosti (kind of like hashbrowns) and chicken and spinach, and dessert was vanilla/strawberry ice cream with applesauce and whipped cream. More important than any food we ate was the entertainment--alphorns, flag throwing, yodeling, Swiss dancing, water piano, accordions, and more. I even went on stage and got a shot at blowing the alphorn (I did pretty darn good if I don't say so myself!). And, I guess I had such a good time up there and they enjoyed laughing at me so much that they invited me back up to yodel into the microphone. Then, they forced me to chug a beer because apparently, "yodeling makes you thirsty!"
The evening was incredible and totally worth the money. We couldn't have found ANYTHING better to do! We walked the mile back home by the water and then crashed!
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