Day 6 - Zurich

Sad to leave Lucerne, we started the day with a beautiful walk in Lucerne Old Town, checked out of hotel no fights about parking - even got a decent coffee, excellent start. First stop is Küssnacht famous for William Tell's battle. Wilhelm Tell is well hidden on Hohle Gasse near Küssnacht am Rigi. Crossbow within reach and arrow ready.

"Wilhelm Tell knows he has to come through this hollow alley. There is no other way to Küssnacht am Rigi where the Gessler Castle is located. Wilhelm Tell is waiting in his safe hiding place on Hohle Gasse. He lies in wait there. Hour after hour goes by. Suddenly he appears. Gessler, who managed to escape the stormy Lake Lucerne after all, comes riding up with his entourage. Wilhelm Tell carefully adjusts the arrow in his crossbow again. He aims and has the crossbow trigger close to the stop. Gessler recognises Wilhelm Tell behind the hiding place just as he pulls the trigger. An incredulous look is on Gessler's face as he falls to the ground, fatally hit by Tell's arrow.

With the second arrow, which he had already put in his quiver in Altdorf, Wilhelm Tell shot the tyrannical bailiff Gessler.

Tell's heroic deeds quickly became known throughout the country around the Waldstätte.

The cantons of the Waldstätte, shaken up by Tell's deeds, soon got rid of their bailiffs and have remained a free and independent people to this day." There you go a little bit of history.

Then onto Gersau to catch a Ferry across to Beckenreid. When we arrive at Ferry terminus which is just a small car park there must have been at least 30 - 40 cars there. There was no place for people to park. We joined the Bus queue, thought there was no way we were getting on but this Ferry was like the Tardis, it took just about every car. I was helping the man by getting people to move forward so that they could squeeze the last cars and bikes on. Can put that on my resume - was glad we got on as it was another hour for the next ferry - we weren't going to wait and the Ferry ride was gorgeous.

You know when you are in your own country and you see people do such silly things, like in Africa they think wild animals are not dangerous and want to get close to have a good photo, or you see the most ridiculous driving. We now know that we need to be patient they could be from a foreign country, not understand the language, or drive on the other side of the road. We are on the Ferry minding our own business and I ask John to put his feet up next to mine for a photo, he does so and next minute we get a tap on the shoulder. I think they are telling us off for putting our feet on the railing, but NO NO NO, they are looking for the owners of a Black Audi who have left their vehicle. Etiquette is that someone stays with the vehicle until you have paid, instead, the attendant had to go and ask all passengers if they had a car with the number Arrr Eeee - yep that is us, our number plate starts with AI.

Next it was onto Schwyz where we have a choice of excursions, open top cable cars, steepest funicular in the world 200m cave network - we can't do it all, so we opt for the caves having done the others on previous days. This is where the adventure for the day began, before I got the hand of the GPS and told it to let us choose the routes - I made do by telling it to avoid main roads. I hadn't turned this setting off which is why she was taking us on some very very very narrow roads. Roads that you hope and pray nothing comes in the opposite direction.

We took the road to the caves, passed the steepest funicular in the world and it looked bloody steep. Then on past a really high waterfall and eventually turn off for the caves. The name of the caves is "Hell Hole" and it warns that it isn't for the faint hearted. But you gotta live a little. I think the next 20 minutes took much more adrenalin than any little cave would. We stupidly didn't stop at the sign that said Hell Hole because it looked shut up and instead we trusted the navigator. She did warn us that there was "Limited access". Anyway, off we toodle, up and up and up and up on a single track road where at times I think it is as wide as the car itself. On the way up I (as the passenger am on the hill side - so it doesn't seem that scary, but after we realise that we are going into worse danger as it is a sheer climb and no way of turning around - we think we are a gonner! John manages to turn around, he did it really well - not before I was putting my feet through the floor boards of the car - I was braking that hard form the passenger side. There is no footage of this as it truly was too petrifying to think about filming. Any hoo! John turns car around, brilliant driving and we don't go off the cliff, but now it is my turn on the outside and I do not know whether it is an optical illusion but I feel that we are going to go over the edge all the way down. I think there is a bit of footage of this...

We also stopped in Schwyz for lunch, we had a toasted cheese and tomatoes panini to share, luckily! They didn't accept cards and we only had CHF20 on us. Phew, otherwise we would have had to do a runner.

After Schwyz and our caves adventure, we opt for the traditional routes and wend our merry way to Rapperswil-Jona and onto Zurich. The traditional route takes us through a 9km tunnel and we arrive in Zurich in no time. We took the road along the lake into Zurich but you are low down and the houses on the Lake have high hedges and you only get glimpses of the Lake. Our hotel is on a hill a little bit out of town, still in Zurich but not as central as our other hotels have been. John is doing brilliantly on the driving in busy Zurich until I tell him to go up this road which happens to be a tram line only road. Luckily John realises and swerves and finds the narrow gap between a bench and a lamp post. Lucky no pedestrians were harmed, but the locals would have been shaking their heads. This is now known as "thommo's bench"!

We checked in and then went into town on the tram 6, we are touring around the old town and see these scooters. We are young at heart - so what the heck. We signed up for Lime and learned to ride a scooter. We would have travelled around the old town for a good 30 minutes, stopping and having a drink, then carrying on. It was still very hot, so this was a great option and a lot of fun too!

John's first ride on an electric scooter

Dinner was supposed to be on a roof top terrace but google maps and John didn't manage to find it - it would be 50m away and then we were 400m away. We walked around the houses and then gave up and settle for a charming place. It then came time to go home, we use our little app and we know we need to get a Tram 6 to the Zoo. We go to the nearest stop (as told to us by the stupid app) only to find out the trams stopped at 8pm. So we fiddle faddle around trying to work out how to get home, we are furious with the hotel for not letting us know. We get an Uber and ask him to pick us up in an area where cars are forbidden, so that didn't go smoothly either. eventually we meet up with our lovely Uber driver from Romania, and we are grateful that he worked so hard to find us. As we are on our way home, we see all the Tram 6's running by - heck what did we get wrong. It was just that stop that they no longer stopped and the Tram 6 runs all night, if we had walked about 200m further along we would have picked up the 6 all the way home. Got to love strange places! John is not happy he cannot get angry with the hotel.