For New Years, we ventured to Lucerne, Switzerland, towards the south of the country and nearing the Italian border. Given the holidays, we opted for a resort nestled in the Alps just a short ferry-ride across the lake and then a funicular straight up about a 1,000 feet on the side of a mountain. Sadly, we haven’t had any spectacular lake views yet as it’s been foggy, but hopefully the sun will come out for us before we leave on New Years day.

We decided to journey back into downtown Lucerne this morning to take a look around, taking the funicular down the mountain and boarding the ferry back across the lake.

Lucerne itself seems to be a quiet city, although this was the first stop on our trip so far where we’ve encountered large tour groups. It has all the prerequisites of a small European town – some cafes, great lake views, and a couple nice churches.

The primary feature of the town is the ‘covered bridge’ which stretches across the lake and has a series of nice paintings inside (some of which were ruined by a fire in the ’90s).

The views from the bridge are quite nice, as are the paintings (sorry for poor quality photo, they are a bit worn anyhow, and the low lighting wasn’t helping!).

In addition to the covered bridge, we also checked out the cathedral, which was unfortunately packed with tourists, but very beautiful inside.

Otherwise, we wandered through the small squares / shopping district for about an hour before taking the ferry back to the resort for lunch and some fu  winter activities, like ice skating and enjoying the heated outdoor pool (and hoping the fog clears up!).

Now, off to enjoy an Aperol spritz or two and ring in the New Year!