I had most of our March Break trip planned by February, except there was a pesky day which I didn’t know what to do with. We had plans to go to Berlin halfway through our trip, but there just wasn’t enough stuff around Switzerland to do before we headed to Berlin.

I researched a lot of the typical places that people go to (i.e., Interlaken, Jungfraujoch) and looked at other interesting things in Switzerland (i.e., CERN & Large Hadron Collider) but they were inaccessible for a variety of reasons (security access or prohibitive transportation time). Other ideas were to visit Dave in Lausanne or just spend the time in Zurich (which I had heard was boring/expensive though). Eventually I came across something cool, which was a hotel at the top of Mount Pilatus, a mountain in the Swiss Alps just outside of Luzern.

What caught my interest was that the hotel was at the summit of a real mountain (i.e., one that you could not reach normally via car or other public transport). I’m never going to have the skill to mountaineer to the summit of a mountain, so this was the next best thing (plus there is the security of a hotel). I booked a night there, and off we went.

Because it was winter, to reach Pilatus, you have to take a 35 minute gondola from Kriens, a suburb of Luzern. The gondola starts off over the city, but civilization gradually drops off – you see a few shacks and hikers, but eventually there are only trees. This takes you to Fräkmüntegg, which isn’t the actual mountain yet, but an outdoor activities playground. Then you get on a shared cable car to take you up to the summit. When we took this, it was our second trip up a mountain so it wasn’t as surprising (more on that in another post), but there was one neat moment in the ascent where you go over a ridge blocking your view and finally catch sight of the mountain. It’s like in the movies where the hero emerges from a cave to find luscious forests and ruins from an old civilization.

After arriving, we proceeded to check-in so as to ditch our bags; we would have plenty of time to explore later! We were surprised to be told at reception that we would be the only guests at the 28-room hotel that night! I was expecting a grungy hotel, but it was actually pretty nice – it was just renovated a few years ago as part of a project to renovate all the facilities on top of the mountain.

Because we were the only guests, it felt much more like a B&B than a hotel. There were only 2 hotel staff, the person from the reception and the managing director (who apparently stays at the top of the mountain year round!). We had a “welcome drink” and chatted about Canada, Switzerland, etc. They were also our cook and wait staff!

I guess that many times throughout the year, the hotel is only partially filled because they have a system of motion activated lights throughout the hotel. It was quite spooky for us to find out this fact, because after we dropped off our stuff and prepared to explore the mountain, we opened our door to find the hallway pitch dark! Who knows what sort of Swiss monsters dragons could be lurking on top of Mount Pilatus.

We went out to watch both the sunset and sunrise, but there were a lot of clouds that day so it wasn’t as magnificent as it could have been. The good thing was that there were no other pesky tourists around so we could take lots of photos and not have people get in our way or appear in our picture. I actually messed up my camera’s white balance during the sunrise and forgot to change it back, which caused an interesting effect of giving my pictures a sepia tone.

Later, as we prepared to check out, I heard what I thought was a helicopter, but thought that they were just doing construction outside. Then I heard it again and went out to the window to take a peek. In fact, it was a helicopter! The only way to get (heavy) construction supplies up to the mountain is via helicopter and it was just flying a couple of runs that morning.

This was an interesting and worthwhile experience. I think the best part was that it was secluded. After travelling a lot, I’m increasingly annoyed by throngs of tourists and it was nice to have peace and quiet and to appreciate the view by ourselves. As we were leaving, the first cable car had come up with a tour group, and the tourists were swarming the mountain. Hotel staff had also arrived to clean and prepare food in the restaurants. Having so many people around, it just didn’t feel the same – it was a tourist attraction again, and not a tranquil villa in the mountains.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: marchbreak11, travelling