Survey

Get More Blogs

Calendar

September 2008
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Aug		Oct »
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Travel Bloggers

Ali
Katie

Castle of Chillon, Lucerne, Switzerland

If there is a site to see while in Lucerne, then the Castle of Chillon is it. Sure, there are others, but are they free? Are they centrally located within the heart of Lucerne? Do they offer excellent, beautiful views of the town below? Can you walk through them without bumping shoulders with hundreds of other camera-lugging tourists?

Maybe. I don’t know, I didn’t go to all of them! But the one my fellow Aussie travelers and I did stumble upon was the Castle of Chillon and my goodness, was it wonderful.

For starters, the exercise is great. It’s no joke climbing up the grass-covered stones up the path and into the castle. Considering we’d already walked a few miles over the course of the day, I was proud at my reserve and stamina as I continued to journey on foot all over Lucerne.

The fact that it’s free to visit the vintage (built in the 13^th century) castle should facilitate one’s desire to see and climb every step once inside. It’s often the “free” sites that turn out to be the best! The Castle of Chillon does not offer tour guides or little headsets (at least none we were aware of) and there are no plastic plaques distributed around informing tourists of what they were looking at. Truth be told, upon entering the castle, I almost felt like we all missed the ticket booth and were intruding because number one, there weren’t a lot of people walking in or outside (that turned out to be a site bonus), and two, there weren’t a lot of “things” inside to see. It was the antiqueness of the castle itself and the view from the top, that were worth the trek!

I like the spontaneity of walking through the Castle. Because there wasn’t a booth like at Westminster Abbey or the Coliseum, I really felt the age of the walls, the smell of the dirt floors, and the beauty of looking out the tiny windows. To see cows grazing the grass below, the sun moving in through the clouds above, and the colorful tops of the houses everywhere, separated Lucerne from the other towns I’d visited and made Switzerland, overall, one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever had the pleasure of traveling to!