“Visiting Lucerne is like going to Disneyland: You can’t imagine that it is real because it looks like a movie lot,” said American novelist Brad Thor and really, he wasn’t far off the mark. Take a crystal clear lake, snow-capped mountains, and a medieval Old Town, then add the best of clocks, cheese, and chocolate, and you have the picture-perfect Swiss town. For many travelers, Lucerne is Switzerland.
The fascination with the charming town on the shores of Lake Lucerne is centuries old. William Turner made it famous with a series of watercolors in the 1830s and 1840s, and in 1863, nearby Rigi mountain was the highlight of the world’s first overseas package holiday. A Thomas Cook group tour to Switzerland included climbing to the summit to watch the sunrise.
