Time had finally come for my first proper solo trip! It might seem like a rather random location, but it was one of the best options as I was traveling to Europe for work, and one of the flights had a layover at Zurich. It was part impulse I suppose, I just felt like I wanted to extend for a little while and that stopover felt perfect. Between the few countries to choose from, Switzerland felt the safest.
Hence, beginning my 4 days solo tour around the Swiss alps! This post will cover the first two days which focused around the Lucerne area (one of the popular bases for going to the mountains).
Accommodation in Luzern (2 nights)
Aparthotel Adler Luzern
Address: Süesswinkel 10, 6004 Luzern, Switzerland (about 10 min walk from train station)
Price: SGD$90/night for a bed in 4-bed room, including breakfast
Obviously not a cheap accomms, understandably so since Swiss is one of the most expensive countries in Europe. But the location was decent and the bed was comfy, tho it was a shared room.
Getting around Switzerland
There are plenty of tips out there so I won’t go into detail, figure out what’s best for you depending on your travel style. For me the Swiss pass was extremely worth it as I could get the youth plan for 4 days, and I was traveling between cities as well i.e. airport to Lucerne, Lucerne to Interlaken etc which would have racked up the cost quite a bit.
Find out more here.
What to do around Luzern
- Old Town @ Lucerne
- Mt. Pilatus
- Mt. Rigi
And that’s it LOL. But bear in mind I’m speaking from the perspective of 2 days in Lucerne, so this is plenty enough and in fact i didn’t even have time to cover them all which I’ll talk about in a bit.
Old Town @ Lucerne
Getting there: Take a train from Zurich airport. You’ll need to change train once at Zurich HB, and there are a few options from there to go Lucerne. Google maps has it mapped out well. From Lucerne station, the old town is a few minutes walk and you can see the famous bridge as the marker.
Try if you can to stay here, because not only is it a lovely place for morning exploration, it’s at close proximity to the train station and nearby famous sights. I personally didn’t get to explore Lucerne as much as I had liked, partly because of poor time management and planning LOL.
It was a cold cold journey from the airport to Lucerne, temperature dropped colder than I had expected and I was shivering while waiting for the train. I was not properly dressed. There was a friendly old man on the train that tried to communicate with me in German, and gave me a toy car almost as a sign of friendship lol.
The friendly old man
While trying to figure out what he was saying, I sorta befriended two Chinese tourists who were also trying to understand what he was saying to them (and also got their own toy cars). Later, they followed me as they were trying to get to Lucerne as well. Along the way they told me they’re on a Euro trip and Switzerland was just a 2-day stop. One of them was interested in buying watches, while the other was interested in sightseeing. Then it kinda spiraled from there and the watch-friend volunteered her sightseeing-friend to follow me, and they asked for my Facebook etc. At this point i’m like wait wat. I mean yes it’s nice to meet strangers on trips like these, but I was in a serious bout of introversion and frankly reluctant to travel with anyone else, but i was also felt so bad to decline, so I awkwardly tried to distant myself and try to body-language-show my reluctance #introvertwoes. So awkward. Thankfully in the end they didn’t contact me anyway so my solo trip was intact.
Anyways. So I reached the town in the afternoon, right before check-in, and was greeted by cold. Lots and lots of cold, and snow. So cold i caved in and bought pricey Udon. My agreement to myself was to be extremely budget with food since it was expensive there, and save the money to do other things. So this was my first cave-in LOL.
OTW to the old town
Giving in to a nice warm bowl of Udon!
I had a bit of time before check in so I decided to walk around Lucerne a little bit to snap some photos and to the supermarket to gather up my budget food supply for the next few days (basically bread, ham and cheese).
The old town of Luzern
One of the Luzern bridges.
Such beautiful buildings, seriously. And a lovely mini waterfall.
If it weren’t so cold i’d be sitting here contemplating life
Every turn is so photogenic
I really liked Lucerne actually, despite being a little grey and misty and cold, the buildings were super pretty. This was one of my regrets on this trip, not being able to cover Lucerne a bit more. There are lots more stuff here that’s quite famous, and slightly further off there’s the lion monument, so spare some time for Lucerne if possible!
Mt. Pilatus
I don’t really deserve to be talking about this since i literally saw nothing at Mt. Pilatus due to 1) poor planning 2) poor research 3) poor everything. I left the Luzern area close to 2pm, and with a bit of getting lost, I reached Mt. Pilatus just in time for the last cable car up. Leaving me with essentially nothing to do, since I had to take the last cable car down almost immediately. I look back with much regret at this lack of research but yes, it can always be better, all the time. So do take note: go early in the morning, take note of cable car/train timings, throughout the trip they were my biggest itinerary dependancy.
I’m rambling. So anyway, I don’t deserve to be talking about Mt Pilatus, but I still would recommend it just because I read up so much about it prior to the trip (T_T) and I’m sure everyone would love it. Find out more here: http://www.pilatus.ch/en/
The cable car station
I still went up anyway to take the last cable car, and got down at the wrong stop halfway up Mt. Pilatus, so literally all I could take was the sight of the trees with the mountain in the background and cable cars. Sigh. All that effort for that. At least it was pretty.
The wrong cable car stop i got off at
Well, at least i got myself some classic winter tree shots.
Comforting to know at least it was pretty and I wasn’t in such a sour mood that I didn’t take pictures.
So day 1 was extremely anti climatic for me and to make things worse, sun sets pretty early so by the time I reached back Luzern it was cold and dark, and I went into the train station which was still very cold cuz they had no heaters, and I just sat at one of the cold benches and ate my cold sandwich feeling sorry for myself.
And because I was shivering and feeling so miserable, I decided to fuck it and went into some random cafe to buy expensive coffee and warm myself and tell myself it’s okay. I’m not sure how I decided to set strict budgets with food and all that, I think I’m still stuck in the mindset of needing to scrimp and budget on travels back in my uni days. I should still be savvy but I don’t think it means I need to be miserable. That latte wasn’t even that nice, but it did wonders to my mood!
I went to bed determined to do it right the next day at Mt. Rigi.
Mt. Rigi (hiking)
Getting here: Plenty of routes in, you can combine with hiking as well. The three routes are from Vitznau (railway up to Rigi Kulm, a popular option is to combine taking a boat from Lucerne to Vitznau first tho you wouldn’t want to be on a boat in winter), Weggis (cable car to Rigi Kaltbad), and Arth-Goldau (railway up to Rigi Kulm). I chose the last option. Timetable here.
Plenty to do at Mt. Rigi. You would hardly run out. Ski or snowboarding definitely fun on these peaks (I kinda regret not doing it, think i was a bit afraid doing it alone lol). If you’re not up for extreme sports, there’s still sledding which is more mild. And finally there’s snowshoe trekking for those who wish to take it slow or take some nice photos.
Learning from the day before, I was at the breakfast table before daylight, and out to the streets as soon as I saw the first signs of it. I made it in good time at the train station and was heading upwards at around 9am. *pats self on back*
Look at how cold and round and tired I was. Lucky I wore the right jacket that day.
The cold cold cold cold day
The little train up Mt. Rigi
Inside the little train
I chose to go straight up to Rigi Kulm because I wanted to hike from there.
Finally at Rigi Kulm
Once there, I was quite confused so i went straight to the information centre to ask for help lol. The kind old man at the counter was super friendly! I asked him whether I can rent snowshoes and he was happy to help me figure out which paths I should take and where I should return the shoes later on. They’re quite flexi basically the mountain is a network of rental spots so you could rent some things from one spot and return it at another. He was so excited talking about the trekking routes and was saying he would totally come along if he weren’t working, he was just so passionate about the mountain it was quite endearing really.
My route was: Rigi Kulm -> Rigi Staffel -> Rotstock (for a fantastic panorama view) -> Rigi Staffel -> Rigi Kaltbad.
I got set up all ready to go and started my snowshoe hike! I had my camera around my neck and a GoPro in my pocket. It was a challenge at first taking photos of myself, but I got used to it and eventually developed some hacks and tricks.
Happy that I’m early and have the whole day to explore.
Very friendly folks who greeted me as we walked by. Lots of doggggs too.
🙂
It was mostly filled with sportsy folks skiing, snowboarding etc.
From Staffel, it’s a short detour and upward hike to Rotstock where the famous views are at. And it definitely didn’t disappoint!
The beautiful view at the top of Rotstock
Yaaaass act yi ge feat. overfiltered Instagram photo that was done next day on the train while feeling all bleary and stuff
Had my very sad sandwich at the top. Honestly tho it was horrible, bread was dry, cheese was the worst, ham was the only decent part of it. This was to be my meal for the next few days, eventually I got rid of the horrible dry cheese and it was much more edible lol. I went to great lengths to save on food…
From Rotstock, I headed onwards towards Rigi Kaltbad.
I was really enjoying myself with all the self-indulgent photo taking, i loved putting myself far off from the camera as a part of the picture in the background, it adds so much more life to the scenery and also a great memory for me to keep.
This was an immensely therapeutic walk. Was so peaceful as the crowds were at the slopes. 10/10 recommend.
The trick to many of my photos hahahahahaha. They had tons of these along the trails which was immensely helpful.
One of the examples of my photo fails. There are plenty of time lapses showing me rushing to get into the photo and dropping lots of shit along the way and going back to pick them up.
After about 4 hours of walking and obnoxious photo taking, I reached Rigi Kaltbad where one of the bigger rental stores are located.
Pretty in its own right to sit down and chill.
At this point, I was a bit conflicted as to whether I wanted to rent sleds or smth and try out something thrilling, or whether I wanted to continue hiking, whether I wanted to go back etc……. at the end of the day I made the mistake of deciding to go to Weggis because there was a cable car there that takes you down from Kaltbad. Weggis was literally nothing, mostly carparks, and residential areas. 
Probably cause it was winter also. Argh.
So i actually went back up to the mountain (thank goodness for Swiss Pass). By then it was too late to go sledding or whatever (UGH) so I went for another short walk.
It was a really nice walk though cuz the sun was setting so the scenery was so beautiful.
seriously worth sitting and chilling for a while.
❤
Walking back to my camera
Panorama shot on iphone! My camera and gopro completely ran out of batt.
This was basically where I sat to watch the sunset over the mountains.
I almost missed the last on the way back as I was so caught up with chilling by the sunset. Fortunately there was another way back by another train to Vitznau, so I could still take that. Phew. Make sure to check on train timings.
Irrelevant but I saw this super pretty dog on the way back.
Also unrelated but I caved in and got myself Chinese takeaway cuz I was so sick of the bread.
Hahaha. That’s about it covering the first two days in Swiss. Lots of anti climatic moments and bad decisions, but all in all I’d still look back at it in fondness given it’s my first official solo travel.
Next two days of Swiss coming up soon!
darmawanders 