THE REST OF THE STORY...
January 11, 2014
This was quite a week for those of us on the east coast...severe snow and ice storms were the norm! Overturned tractor trailers along the highways were not an unusual sight!
It's warming up now...snow is melting. But, I look forward to the next snowfall...NOT snowstorm!!
This weather is so different from the mild temperatures we experienced on our Christmas riverboat trip along the Rhine to the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland...all of which had no snow at all!
In my last post, we went as far as Strasbourg, France. In this post, we go to the finish...Lucerne, Switzerland!! Our next stop after Strasbourg was Breisach and the Black Forest in Germany. This densely forested, mountainous region is famous for its traditional cuckoo clocks, cherry schnapps, Black Forest cake and is the setting for numerous legends and fairy tales.
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From Breisach, we took a short ride to a beautifully restored Alsace town, Colmar. Laced with pedestrian-friendly streets, half-timbered houses, canals and world-renowned museums, Colmar is a storybook place!
 
It's the home of the Maison des Tetes (House of Heads,) so named for the 111 heads decorating its façade...
and it's also the onetime home of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty...a version of which we found at a traffic circle.
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The following day we bid farewell to our riverboat and crew and headed to Lucerne, Switzerland for a few days. Our hotel was right on the beautiful and busy Lake Lucerne.
One of the most striking sites in this city is the famous 1821 Lion Monument...sculpture of a wounded lion commemorating the Swiss Guards who died while defending Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. Mark Twain said it was "the most moving and mournful piece of stone in the world..."and indeed, it is! Click on the photo to see more detail. (In fact, you can do that with all the photos!)
Lucerne has some of the most unusual and beautifully painted houses.... like these...
and a house decorated especially for Advent! Each evening at 6 PM, the numbers would flip and new window revealed.
The famous Chapel Bridge is a 670 foot-long wooden bridge that spans the Reuss River. Originally built in 1333, it was rebuilt in 1993 after a devastating fire.
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Finally, the extraordinarily beautiful Lucerne Cathedral...
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Our Christmas trip each year renews our spirits and makes us even more thankful for all the gifts with which our Creator blesses us. One of the things we most enjoy is meeting locals and exchanging some stories about our lives... conversations, photos... it makes us more compassionate, understanding of lifestyles that may differ from ours and reaffirms our feelings that people are the same no matter where they are! This is a shout out to our newest friends, Eric and Sabrina, with whom we shared dinner at a Lucerne Christmas Market.
Thanks for checking back. Hope to see you for my next... enjoy your week ahead!
Hugs,
abbyj
