Basel & Lucerne - Friday - Sept.24

 It will be a super busy day.  Basel walking tour, lunch, bus to Lucerne, walking tour, special invite to the Chef's dinner table, and then we have to pack so that we can place all of our luggage outside our door by 6:30am !!

Long day.

Our view during breakfast while cruising to Basel.

Lucky beautiful weather is still with us!  Thanks! for your thoughts and prayers.

Into Basel we went .. ready to explore many interesting sights.   Larry- at the very start we saw an exciting special art project, the .. Tinguely Fountain - built in 1977 by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely.  It merges sculptural machines with water.   Very cute.

Basel has been located in a very strategic location for several thousand years.   It's at the corner of Switzerland, Germany, and France.  Talk about a maze of cultural influences!   Its built along the Rhine River and several large hills.   We started to hike up to the Basel Minster.

This is one of 18 monasteries that were located in Basel.   When Basel changed from Catholicism to Protestantism these were re-purposed.

The Minster was originally a Catholic church, built between 1019 and 1500 in Romanesque and Gothic styles.   Much like Strasbourg's storks, dragons play a part in Basel's past lore.   Statues are everywhere.  At the Minster I took a pic of a knight fighting one, it's on the front wall of the church !!

There are great views of the river from the church.

We walked down the hill.

Of course, I found another fancy sign ..

We made it to the city hall.   In front was the daily farmers' market :

Inside the courtyard of the city hall - an interesting painted wall and statue :

on our way back to the ship I noticed a couple more gatehouses!   Neat!

Just before going back to the ship for lunch, we ran across a famous Christmas shop, look at the description in Swiss underneath the shop name !!

After lunch on the ship we boarded buses for the drive to Lucerne, a beautiful city that sits amid snowcapped mountains on Lake Lucerne.

There are two wooden bridges in the old town area,

the first is .. Kapell-Brucke, built around 1360 :

that's their former prison behind it ..

the second is .. Spreuer-Brucke, built around 1408

interesting paintings inside the bridge:

look at the Musegg Wall on the hill and some of its towers ..

We entered a beautiful church, 'Jesuitenkirche' :

Construction started in 1667, I loved how bright and airy it looked, such a contrast to the normal dark interiors of other medieval churches.

This is the sign for the Hotel that Jan and I will be staying in, returning after our stay at Lake Como in Italy, and a night at Zermatt at the base of Matterhorn.

We came upon a wedding just finishing up at city hall:

They are required by Swiss law to marry at a registry office before exchanging vows in a church ..???!!

Another beautiful Swiss town.  We boarded our bus and headed back to the ship for our final special dinner.

It's 12:10am and time to get to bed.  Luggage outside our door at 6:30am, then get some breakfast.  We leave at 8:00am for Lake Como, Italy, stopping for a little touring at Bellinzona and its medieval castles.

Hope you've been enjoying my scribbling and pic's.

Ciao!