Luzern

Today we went into the city of Luzern or Lucerne, where we arrived last night. It's a cute city/town built on a river which has a combination of Medieval and 18th century builldings. We spent most of the day walking around and taking pictures. It's very interesting because many of the structures look very German, a huge contrast to the Parisian style of Geneva. Sometimes I even forgot we were in Switzerland and assumed we were in Germany. We also saw two wooden bridges, each from the 13th century. One was damaged by fire in 1993, but has since been rebuilt. It was a lot of fun. The only downside that it was snowing/raining slushily (is that even a word?) the entire time we were in Luzern, and there was a very thick fog, so we couldn't see the mountains around the city and our fingers and toes were frozen. Other than that it was a lot of fun. We were going to go to a transport museum but my brother was the only one who wanted to go and he changed his mind so we instead went on to our next task for the day, which was driving to Zurich, a larger city in German Switzerland. 

The 13th century bridge that was damaged by fire and rebuilt. 

This was originally part of the city's wall. Most Medieval cities had walls that surrounded and protected them. I love all the castle-like buildings in Europe!

Another interesting thing about the bridge is that there are paintings hanging from the roof of it. Here the patron saint of Luzern (almost every European city has a patron saint) is being martyred while his killer is being taken away by the devil. You can see the saint's head (which has been cut off and is on the ground) has a gold halo around it.

Remains of the city's Medieval wall.

The paintings on the second wooden bridge depicted the affect of the Black Plague on the city of Luzern. You can see from some of the other paintings that not even nobility was safe.

Many buildings have medieval paintings on them.

This wall was painted with a noble family tree from medieval Luzern.

The stone tower next to the bridge was once a prison and torture chamber. 

A palace on a hill outside Luzern. When we first arrived it was covered in fog.