30/60 Trip: First Stop Lucerne

In 2019, I turned 30 just a month before my mom turned 60. We decided that instead of gifts for our milestone birthdays, we would instead go on a mother/daughter trip to celebrate. After much debate on where to go, we finally agreed upon South Africa.

We put together a rough plan of places we wanted to visit and sites (or animals) we wanted to see along our journey and left a few blank spaces on our itinerary incase something caught our eye while we were there.

The first leg of our trip was our layover in Zurich, Switzerland. We had about 12 hours between flights and were planning on going to our usual restaurant in Zurich, walking the familiar paths, and doing the same old thing we do whenever we are on a layover in Switzerland. I’m not sure when we decided to change plans, but I’m glad we did something different this time.

The Zurich airport is conveniently attached to their railroad system which can bring you directly into the city center of Zurich in about 15 minutes…or it can take you to Lucerne in an hour. Since we had the time and wanted a new outlook on Switzerland, we jumped on a train, took a (much needed) nap, and woke up in beautiful Lucerne.

Walking out of the train station, we were greeted with blue skies and even bluer water surrounding the picturesque city. Our afternoon consisted of walking through cobblestone streets, stopping in local stores, having lunch, and taking the Gütsch Bahn funicular up to the Hotel Château Gütsch, were we enjoyed views of the city with celebratory drinks!

After heading back to the airport, we used the Swiss lounge to shower and get ready for our overnight flight to Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town.

Music in the video: “Perfect World” by Broken Bells