In the photo, a cup of black coffee with cream at the museum kiosk.

We began our day with a dilemma, whether to move to another location near Lucerne or stay where we are. When I tried to book for nights here on AirBnB there weren’t any vacancies, so we booked somewhere else. I had a couple of long winded communications from our new host that were a bit off putting in terms of rules and conditions and unclear instructions on how to get to the house.

We spoke with our host here who said he always has a couple of rooms free for people who want to stay on. He went away and we thought about it. Was the ease of staying in our present location where we know our way around worth losing one night’s fee, the cost of a late cancellation.

Our host then disappeared for a couple of hours and only got back to us around checkout time of 11.00 a.m. We packed up in case we had to leave, which worked out well because we had to change rooms. In the end, we weren’t ready to leave for work (museums) until midday.

We had lunch at a small bakery in a shopping centre near the Lion Monument. They don’t just have bread, but rolls and salads.

The following quote from Wikipedia explains the significance.

‘The Lion Monument (German: Löwendenkmal), or the Lion of Lucerne, is a rock relief in Lucerne, Switzerland, designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen and hewn in 1820–21 by Lukas Ahorn. It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. It is one of the most famous monuments in Switzerland, visited annually by about 1.4 million tourists.^[1] In 2006 it was placed under Swiss monument protection.^[2]

Mark Twain praised the sculpture of a mortally-wounded lion as “the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.”^[3]

The above is my photo, not one from Wikipedia. I agree with Mark Twain, this is a very moving sculpture.

We had our museum pass from the previous day and visited the museum near the monument. This was when I had a first bout of museum legs for the day.

My score card for the two days. Not bad.

Our next museum of the day was the Bourbaki Panorama. Once again this was war related, this time a celebration of Swiss humanity and the beginning of the Red Cross organisation.

Our third museum for the day was the Transport Museum. It was fantastic and full of children. I wished I was a child myself as there was so much that was interactive.

Afterwards we walked along the lake to the Bahnhof where we found an open supermarket to stock up a little on food for the next couple of days. We bought a lasagne and salad for tea, plus a cake to share. Yesterday was Stephen’s birthday and we were celebrating in a modest way.

The day was cloudy and cool enough at times for jumpers. Very good for sightseeing.

The swimming pools on the lake provide another way to swim. We saw a couple of middle aged men swimming in the lake as we walked along.

Even though our new room is two floors lower than the other one we still have a glimpse of the mountains.

Looking out and looking in. You can see our bed in it’s couch phase, a section pulls out, one of the mattresses is transferred to it and we have a double bed.

We weren’t so much lost as having difficulty finding places we wanted to see. But, we managed to take in Notre Dame Cathedral in all it’s mess, still very impressive/

We had a morning coffee during our morning ramble and liked that chairs at cafes face outwards to the street to take in the views. It was sunny today, warm by the middle,of the day, but still very pleasant to be out.

We had lunch locally at a small restaurant and had Thai food this time.

Then we had an afternoon rest until 5:00 pm when we set out for the Eiffel Tower. We fell into conversation with someone at the station. He told us our planned route on the subway wouldn’t work and we had to go another way. That was helpful.

When we arrived at the station we still had quite a walk through a park and there was quite a lot of dust being blown up. Not quite what we had expected. We had a cold drink before tackling the final part, walking close to the foundations before going up to the Trocadero and around to the next metro.

It was a long and complicated journey on busy trains to get home. As we had a proper lunch we bought sandwiches at our local supermarket, plus small containers of crepe caramel and took them back to our hotel, it was quiet in the breakfast room, so we had our simple meal washed down with a beer.

Then back to our room for the night/

These photos are a little out of sequence.

Breakfast at our hotel this morning was lovely. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, cereals, fruit, pastries, pancakes, toast, coffee and all sorts of extras. Just what we hoped for. We spent some time planning how to get to Albi. We had to book the first train, and that includes a change of train on the way. Then we have one more train to catch. Our host can pick us up and take us to our AirBNB for the night, rather than having to go by bus for the last leg. When our planning session was over we set out on the metro, and got lost, more or less.

We haven’t been out the last couple of days as we finish off watching the Wimbledon finals and plan for our rail journey in Europe. We have two nights at a hotel in Paris and two nights at an AirBNB in the southern French town of Albi.

Today we booked our Paris museum tickets online, resulting in e-tickets for our entry.

We have only booked our first train trip on the Eurostar to Paris. We hope that after that we can just catch trains, but may sometimes have to book, e.g. for scenic train trips in Switzerland. At this stage we are thinking of roughly three weeks of travel, but will see how we go. If we get tired of this type of travel it may be a shorter time. If we love it and want to go further we have time to do so.

We are not used to having to book accomodation when we travel and being locked in after Paris is a bit of a pain as we might want to stay longer. However, accomodation bookings can be changed without penalty if we give notice. We are just now deciding to stay another night in Paris, so I will see about changing our bookings.

We have done most of our packing and Stephen has been very good about preparing meals the last few days. Here is my house husband at work.

I shall crack on with bookings.

We went shopping in the morning and settled down to watch the women’s final of Wimbledon. We don’t usually drink at lunchtime, but felt the occasion called for a beer. Sadly it was a disappointing match with Serena not up to her best. I hope she is feeling OK now, a few hours later.

At around 4.00 we set off to visit Morden Hall Park to enjoy a walk and afternoon tea.

We travelled for about half an hour on the tram. It was very full, with people drinking alcohol and being a bit noisy. It is Saturday afternoon. The park had more people than we were expecting as well, but it wasn’t crowded and it was nice to see so many people out with their children.

There was a warning sign on this little canal about the water being dangerous. However these children and their dog seem to be having a good time and the water is shallower than I thought.

A pot of tea and a shared slice of jam sponge cake made the journey worthwhile. Stephen checked out the bookcase, but found that the books were for children. The light on his hair gives him a sort of Boris look.

There is a nursery selling plants and Stephen checked out this pretty pavilion. The park is run by the National Trust and there is an interesting shop selling gifts and outdoor chairs, BBQs, etc. of the more decorative and expensive kind.

The old waterwheel and these grinding stones show that there was once a working mill here, plus some old stables that have now been made into a community and arts cemtre and cafe.

There is also this attractive house right near the mill, with a formal rose garden.

Our days are spent eating and thinking about meals and revisiting places we have been before. Of course, we are heading off soon for our rail journey through Europe and it’s good to feel that our present life is just a bit boring and to be anticipating having a much more interesting time once we leave.

We spent most of yesterday at home as we seemed to be feeling the effects of jet lag. In the late afternoon we visited the local park and enjoyed catching up with the usual things, such as the kiosk (closed, as it was late), and the community garden. The park is called:

We think of it as the water tower park because of the decorative water tower that dominates the scene. We can see it from our apartment:

And this is what it look like from the park:

Stephen looking graceful in front of the shuttered kiosk.

It was peaceful in the community garden even though it’s impossible to get away from the sounds of traffic.

We saw some squirrels as well, but my phone isn’t good for wildlife, the little creatures don’t let you get very close and they move very fast.

We stopped in at the little off licence on the way home where Stephen was given a copy of the paper, rather than having to buy it.

This morning we planned on seeing the movie ‘Rocketman’, but our information about it screening today was wrong. We may go tomorrow. We had some shopping to do in Boots, then had a coffee at a new cafe nearby. I noticed it yesterday and wanted to try it out. The atmosphere and coffee were fine, but it is like many other cafes here in having packaged sandwiches rather than food freshly prepared in their own kitchen.

As Stephen wanted to go to the library we called in there and had soup at Clocktower Cafe. It is rather like a canteen, and has fairly cheap and varied food. Not so much prepackaged.

I realise from the photos that the ceilings of both places are rather similar. However, the Clocktower Cafe is in an atrium and the photo shows it in one of the ‘sunny spells’.

This afternoon was the tennis, with the big match between Federer and Nadal keeping Stephen entertained whilst I was reading.

The weather continues to be quite mild, very cloudy with ‘sunny spells’. No complaints, we are just glad to not have hot weather, yet.

Let’s do a house tour.

The living room of our apartment from the upstairs landing.

Our bedroom, which has the window on one side and a sliding door on the other side. We get a good cross breeze.

The upstairs landing. This makes an excellent drying area for washing.

The upstairs balcony. This can be accessed from the landing and the main bedroom.

There is a second, smaller balcony off the living room downstairs.

The kitchen is spacious and there is an iMac in the corner which Stephen uses. I have my little office set up in the bedroom upstairs.

There are two bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs. This is the downstairs bedroom.

There are two bathrooms upstairs, with full baths. The downstairs bathroom (not shown) has a shower.