Day 2’s cover photo, a sweeping landscape of the city of Lucerne, was taken from my hotel room, the morning after our first night in Switzerland.
Vantage point: an attached balcony covered in freshly fallen snow.
It’s an 8-image panorama taken with my 35mm Zeiss. I must impress on you just how sharp this lens is. These two images are cropped at 100% magnification from the cover above. Note how finely resolved the tree branches are. Beautiful.
The rest of the day is spent exploring the city of Lucerne itself. The first notable place I visit is the Löwendenkmal, or Lion of Lucerne. A sculpture of a mortally wounded lion carved onto a cliff face, it commemorates the 760 Swiss Guards who died in 1792 during the French Revolution protecting the Tuileries Palace from the revolutionaries.
Of the Lion of Lucerne, Mark Twain writes, in A Tramp Abroad:
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.
Festivities are in full swing and the entire city is decked out in decorations. I take the chance to explore a portion of the old city walls, and come across some kids playing at a playground. I wave hello to them and make my way back into the hubbub, joining a crowd at an open-air market that has been set up in a town square. The warm aroma of coffee, the ringing of bells, the hollering of hawkers, the occasional passerby bursting in song; they all make the winter a little warmer and a little more bearable. Children who have no business being at a market are relegated to a miniature merry-go-round.
Night falls, and the crowd thins, making their way home for dinner. I, too, have my dinner - a large bradwurst sausage with some sort of relish - before heading back just in time to catch the bus back up to the hotel.
