Doug was very excited to be going up the mountain with the steepest cog railway in Europe as the way down. We thought it would be cool but scary. It turns out we were correct, but ut wasn't scary in the way we thought it would be.
We began our trip up the mountain in a 4-person cable car. This was very cool. We could soon see all of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding area.
The next leg of our journey was in a 40-person Gondola. This was not as cool, as we had to stand, and Zack couldn't reach the above head holding places. It was also a bit scary, as it was much faster and every so often we would go up a steep incline and over a cliff and the people by the front window would freak out a little bit.
We reached the summit station and had about an hour and a half to explore. There were three options: go up a small set of stairs to the next level; go up a lot of stairs to the summit; or go through some cave walkways to see the surrounding area. We chose the cave walkways first. These were very cool. You walked through a cave tunnel and then there was a lookout over the side of the mountain to see the land below. There were several of these tunnels and overlooks.
We got to the last tunnel and it started raining pretty hard. We got our umbrellas out to go to the last lookout place. Suddenly, as we stepped out of the tunnel into the open air, FLASH! Then BOOM! We were ABOVE a thunderstorm. This was pretty cool to experience, but it scared the bejeebers out of Zack. We quickly headed back to the tunnels and into the building.
After a few minutes the storm cleared and the view was beautiful. Josh and Zack went up to the next level and played in the snow. Then the boys and Doug tried to climb the stairs to the summit. Josh made it, but it was too much for Doug and Zack. Soon Josh came down and convinced Zack to go with him back to the top. And he made it!
Our trip down the mountain was on Europe's steepest cog railway. This was what we thought was going to be scary. It turns out it wasn't so bad. The train was pretty neat. It was stadium style seating, as the train itself was on almost a 45º angle, and this way all the seats were level.
It took about 45 minutes to descend the mountain. The views were very nice. There were lots of little houses scattered along the side of the mountain.
After we got to the bottom of the mountain, we crossed the street and took a boat ride back to Lucerne.
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