Weekend Part 2: Lucerne

Today was the day that Layla has been waiting a year for.  She finally got to lay eyes on some of the "real mountains"!  We headed out for a day in Lucerne.  Once again, we planned around the kids' interests.  We arrived by train, took a 10 minute boat to an interactive, kid-oriented transport museum, walked along the lake, got ice cream, and visited with friends.  Tack on to that a one hour train ride home at the end of the evening, and the day was complete!

It was a planes, trains, and automobiles kind of day.
Here we are on the #30 bus on our way to the train station.
Layla and Josh love to sit right up front.

On the boat to the museum.  MOUNTAINS in the background!

Lake Lucerne 

 The transport museum was a big hit with the kids.  They especially enjoyed the airplane section, where they got to play around in mock airplanes.  We also did an IMAX movie; Josh was so impressed with the 3-D butterflies that he fell asleep!

This wall of cars was really cool.
The machine below would periodically go and retrieve a car and bring it down for a presentation.

The train engineer preparing for the ride on the steam engine train.  

From the museum, we walked along the lake (past some GORGEOUS hotels and a street jazz festival) until we met up with Marcel, another Novartis friend, and his charming daughter, Mia.  Marcel showed us some of the sites in the old city and then we boarded a bus to his home, 10 minutes away.  Chris and I were in Lucerne for a day 10 years ago, and it felt a bit unreal to be back taking the same pictures that we took back then.  Beautiful then, and beautiful now!

Not a bad place to sun bathe and take a dip in the lake.
Can't beat the view!

 The kids had fun playing together and, once again, we adults ate more delicious food than we needed to, but it was great!

The view from the yard.

 We arrived back in Basel close to 10pm with two tired kids and a beautiful view of the SBB (train station) and a full moon.