Back in Lucerne, you might consider taking a boat ride over to Mt. Rigi. The boat docks are right in front of the train station, with frequent departures. Were going to be writing on the side-panel steamship, the Unterwalden, first built in 1902. It's been perfectly renovated. It's 100 years old but running like a modern timepiece. They have their steam engine on public display, they're so proud of how clean and efficient everything is running.
You can spend a very pleasant afternoon enjoying a boat ride on Lake Lucerne. Various pleasure boats operate on the lake, and you can ride them 45 minutes across the water to the little villages of Weggis and Vitznau. Each of these towns have a number of cafes along the water where you could have lunch or afternoon tea while waiting for the next boat back to Lucerne.
One of the great destinations that you can pick while you're cruising on Lake Lucerne, that's the Vierwaldstatersee, is to go visit Mt. Rigi. It makes a great excursion. You take the boat over to Weggis as we're going to show you, and go up the mountain to Rigi, then back down to Vitznau, then take a boat back to Lucerne.
You could just catch the next boat, going back into Lucerne if you wait around for 10 minutes. Or if you want to spend an hour here in Weggis, have a snack, take a walk along the lake shore, you could do it that way, but we're going up to Mt. Rigi - we're taking the cable car up. The slight problem is that you do have to walk uphill for about 15 minutes to get to the cable car. If you go up Rigi from Vitznau you go right up from the dock on a train—that's a little easier.
Anyway, this was a beautiful cable car ride up. Either way you can have the full round-trip, go up one way and down the other. Halfway up in this case we are changing from the cable car to the rack railway, and this is going to get more spectacular every minute. It's the month of May and so there is still quite a bit of snow up here on the slopes of Rigi. In the summertime probably the snow is all melted, if you come here in July or August, but now it's very white.
And we've arrived at the top enjoy this magnificent vista. We're just saying up at the top for a little while to enjoy the view and take some pictures, but you could go visit the restaurant and have a meal. The view from Rigi is across the Lake to that massif of the Central Alps. These are the highest mountains in the Central Alps, reaching a peak of 10,000 feet at Mount Titlis. You can see why it's a popular days outing.
This is a rack railroad, and that middle rail is actually a rack and there iare gears with teeth on the underside of the train that engage the train to pull it along up and down the steep hills. It's the oldest rack rail Road in Switzerland. It was built in 1871. Of course the cars have been modernized and replaced since then.
You can just walk along the side of the tracks if you wish or on side trails that crisscross and honeycomb all over the hillside. So this half-day outing really exposes you to a whole variety of different kinds of the Swiss transportation starting out with the boat ride, then going up by cablecar and down by train. Mt. Rigi stands 5900 feet high, and is surrounded by water—it's called the island mountain, with its steep shoulders covered with forests and beautiful chalets and cows grazing on the flowery slope. Those are some happy, contented cows on the hillside. All in all its quite the half-day round-trip.
You can easily make a whole day of it just by taking your time and taking a little longer stroll, having a longer lunch. You could get off at some of the other villages along the lake shore. There's a number of hotels in the area, small hotels. You can see why Lucerne is such a popular place for the visitors to stay for a few days because there's quite a variety of things you can do from Lucerne. You can take this trip to Rigi and there's a similar boat and railway trip up Mt. Pilatus. The Swiss schedule is perfectly timed: you get off the train, onto the boat, and depart from Lucerne. Then it's about a 30 minute relaxing ride back to Lucerne stopping a few more times at these little villages along the way, so it can easily be just a one-hour excursion round-trip or two hours or three or four hours. Pick from the many options available to you.
Check their schedules online at their website, lakelucerne.ch or check with your hotel desk, which will have boat schedules, or just go right to the ticket office and find out when is the next boat leaving.