Day Three

The next day we are up bright and breezy. Yesterday we managed a pigeon German conversation with a local bike hire shop and this morning we are collecting our steads. The city is empty even at 10am. We pick our bikes up and race around the city only to discover that a marathon is going on. The streets are closed to cars, and we are able to safely go where ever we like. We ride up duel carriage ways the wrong way around the lake, ringing our bells at passing runners. The city has turned out to spur on the runners, shouting and waving rattles. We cycle around the city like children, getting in the way of the runners from time to time, riding around in circles, fixing slipped chains
It's sunday, and liek all good people we head to a nearby church, however our motives are purely atheist and aesthetic. In this church they have windows made by Marc Chagall, they rise 40' in a tryptich of green, blue and yellow. They are luminous giants. I was aware that he head been commissioned to produce a series of stained glass but I had no idea it was a stones through from our musical hotel.
We end our stay in Zurich here and head to the train station.
From Zurich to Lucerne is approximately 30 miutes on the train, but you hardly notice, as the scenery seems to swollow up the time, rolling, hills, lakes, grasslands and mountains, the sun is shinning and people are out.
The station is in the centre of town next to the lake, you step outside and after a few paces and walking through an enormous archway (a reminant from the old satation), you can see the lake, the surrounding mountains, and a city full of handsome buildings. Like ultimate tourists, we simply turn around in cicrles trying to take everything in. We walk toward our hotel over one of many bridges, the water is turquiose, and populated by an array of ducks and swans. We look and look again at the mountains, I've never seen something so highhalf of the town is encircled by a range of mountains, snow capped and wooded.
Our lodgings for tonight is an old prison (until 1998), and incidently situated behind our future accomodation. The walls are thick and the doors stout, everything a prison is, except you are given a key to your room. I lay on my bed thinking about who must have counted off time in this room, the prison is close to the centre of town, which must have been all the more unbearable for those within it.