Mount Pilatus

After our lovely first day in Lucerne we spent the second on Mount Pilatus, overlooking Lucerne. Pilatus is composed of several peaks, of which the highest (2,128.5 m [6,983 ft]) is named Tomlishorn.

There are two popular ways to get to Mount Pilatus, the golden route and the silver. The golden route enables you to go from Lucerne to Alpnachstad by boat (black line) then up to the peak using the cog wheel train (red line) and down to Kriens via the cable cars (green line) then lastly you take a bus back to Lucerne (yellow line). The silver route omits the boat ride and instead you take the train back to Lucerne. 

Knowing that a 40 min boat ride would not appeal to the boys we opted for the quicker method, the silver route.

But before I get to that, every blog I read it mentioned to check the weather of the peak.. it could be vastly different from the weather in the town. Make sure you go on a clear day.. again could differ from the town. So we checked the weather and it should it to be cold. So we dressed in layers. 

We started by taking the free bus into town. Then we took another free bus to Kriens. On the bus we saw other people also heading to Pilatus who most definitely not dressed for a chilly mountain day.

After getting off the bus there is a 10 minute steep walk up to the cable car. We saw more people in shorts, t shirts and tank tops. We were starting to get a little concerned that we had dressed too warmly. It can't be that all of these people we wrong and only we had checked the weather at the peak..? Turned out we were the ones in the wrong and we had dressed to warmly :(

At the cable car station you buy your tickets. Thanks to the Swiss Travel Pass we got 50% off on all our tickets. There are multiple stops before you get to the peak. We got out at the first stop Krienseregg where there was a lovely playground.

Playground from up above.

Once the boys had their fill of the playground we boarded the cable car again and got off at the second stop Frakmuntegg. On this stop there were many activities like zip lining, obstacle courses as well as a toboggan run. We went straight for the toboggan run!

There was an extra charge for the toboggan. It was an exhilarating experience. I highly recommended it. You can see the video I made of my run here

Once we were done we took the cable car, this one named the Dragon Ride to the summit. 

The first thing we did when we got to the summit was have lunch. We ate at the Pilatus Klum restaurant. Many place in Switzerland did not have hostess' seating you, you just had to grab the first table you could find. Many couple even shared tables. So we hovered until we were able to find a spot. 

Lunch was very good. No pictures to share. And look at that view! 

Afterwards we headed off to hike Tomlishorn. Which to our dismay was closed. So instead we hiked Oberhaupt.

We got some ice cream to cool down and then got in line for the cog wheel train. This Pilatus railway is considered to be the steepest rack railway in the world built in 1873. It is a 40 minute journey down to Alpnachstad. 

Once in Alpnachstad we caught a train back to Lucerne. 

We ate pizza at La Bestia. Blueberry walnut, if you could even fathom such a thing!

Next stop the Jungfrau Region

      

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