Day 5 - Exploring Lucerne

 Lucerne is a city of about 80,000.  The train station is right near the Old Town so we decided to do a stopover and walk around to see what we could see.  It was hot and pretty crowded on the street, so we mostly stuck to the shadowed walks along the river bank.  In the train station we passed a bakery and I got a spinich streudal - it made a delicious lunch!

 Water front in Lucerne with the Chapel Bridge and St. Peters (on the right).

The structure behind us is a water tower (also used as a prison during some time). 

The 'Chapel Bridge' is over 650 years old and connects the Lucerne Theatre with St. Peters chapel on the other side.   There was a big fire in 1993 that destroyed the middle of the bridge as well 81 of the 111 the original paintings that were hundreds of years old. 

Each arch in the structure had an original painting in it.  Only the ones on the ends remain. 

You can see the charred oil painting /wood toward the middle of the bridge where the fire damaged the paintings.

There is an entire middle section that was burned down and this part is newly rebuilt. 

Looking down river from the bridge.

St. Peter's church. Relatively small and simple. 

The paintings on some many of the building fascades were amazing. 

So many clocks on buildings.  I particularly liked the metal gargoyle on the rooftop to the right. 

Lots of city fountains as well - all with potable water. We kind of wanted to throw ourselves into them as we passed by it was so hot today (91 F!)

There are records of monasteries in Lucerne using hydropower dating back to the 700's.  In the 1500s the city had water mills that used the river's power.  These eventually were lost in a fire in the late 1800's and were replaced with an hydroelectric power plant that supplied the city until 1977.

There were kids with inner tubes floating down the river. 

We didn't have quite enough energy to explore the cities old defensive walls, but we could see them from the bridges that we crossed (square parapet sticking up on the right).

Jesuit Church from a distance. 

Another footbridge.  There were a lot across the river.

So much interesting architecture as we wandered through the narrow streets.  Lots of (expensive) specialty shops too. 

Liked this metal dragon supporting the sign.

This building was weirdly a modern  and historical apothacary (drug store).

You can tell by looking at the shelves there are old mason jars with herbs in them (or at least labeled with herbs) as well as modern drug store items. 

This mock up of an old apothacary was in another window of the building. 

This is the alter area of the Franciscan church, just down the street from the Jesuit church.  Apparently Lucern resisted the Reformation movement and remained Catholic.  This church is one of the oldest buildings in the city and dates back to the 1200s with very little change to its original Gothic design. 

These flags painted on the walls were substitutes for the actual flags captured in the Sempach war (1386) that were eventually removed. 

Wood carvings on the pulpit were incredible.

This children's space was up near the alter on the side aisle.  Its the first time I've ever seen any indication that children are an active part of worship inside these historic and beautiful buildings. I found it rather endearing. 

First time I've seen oil lit votive candles. 

Really unique baptismal font (definitely not Gothic).

This is looking straight up at a ceiling full of cherubs.  Very cool.

This is an up close view of the Jesuit Church.

It is larger than the Franciscan church and much lighter.  Although both have white walls, there is a whole extra story of large windows in this space. 

The organ was way up high on this one and looked kind of small in proportion to the building.

We decided it was time to head back to the train station, retrieve our luggage from the lockers and catch the next train to Zurich.  Fortunately the trains run every 30 mins, so we didn't have long to wait.