Friday, July 9, 2026

We were sad to say farewell to the mountains. We ate a last breakfast at Hotel Edelweiss, then rolled our luggage to the cable car station and made our way back to Interlaken to catch a train to Lucerne. Our plan was to head there and store our luggage to check out the city for a few hours before heading to Zurich. I had planned a walking tour across bridges and walls, culminating in eating lunch with a view. However, the world had other plans.

After we had been on the train for a bit, we were stopped at a station for what seemed like a little too long. Eventually, someone came over the speaker to announce that the train would not be continuing to Lucerne. We all needed to disembark and take a bus, instead. Some chaos ensued. Everyone scrambled to get their luggage off the train, wandering around, wondering where to go. There were a couple of buses already there, but neither of them were headed to Lucerne. After some time, a new bus pulled up and everyone who had been on this train made their way toward it. It became clear very quickly that not everyone would fit.

Then someone announced that one of the buses that had already been sitting there would also head in that direction. So we made our way to that bus and put our luggage on underneath it. We managed to get LS a seat next to another girl, but Mr. Strange and I were standing. We had no idea how long we were going to be on this bus; we had had over an hour left on our train journey. The bus was hot and sticky. As we made our way down the winding roads, sweat poured off of me.

Luckily, we only ended up on the bus for about half an hour. We ended up at another train station, a few stops down from the one where we had been dropped off. There, we boarded another train to Lucerne.

We eventually arrived at our destination, but, due to the delays, we were way behind schedule and extremely hungry. We made the decision to forego visiting the city and, instead, grabbed sandwiches from Coop yet again. We ate in the train station and then boarded the train to Zurich.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. We arrived in the city and checked into our hotel, the Mama Shelter Zurich. I had booked a family room, which turned out to be an interesting configuration. It was basically two separate rooms (one with a queen bed and the other with two twins) that joined behind one shared door. LS loved this. The hotel was quirky, with Looney Toons masks covering the bedside lamps.

We settled in and then headed out to explore. We had dinner reservations at Raclette Factory, so we headed in the direction of the Aldstadt. We loved looking at all the shops and eateries with their outdoor tables filled with diners, prime for people watching. Our dinner, however, was only so-so. Raclette is basically fried raclette cheese scraped over potatoes, and, while I was happy to try another traditional Swiss dish, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as fondue. Mr. Strange and LS were not impressed either.

Afterward, we found some gelato to cheer everyone’s moods and stomaches, then headed back to the hotel for some rest.