We arrived in Lucerne.  Starving.  Of course.  Some people may go to Europe to relax and sip the wine and enjoy the food.  I go to Europe to beeline my way across as many countries as I can, chugging a water bottle and shoving an apple down my throat whenever I feel faint from lack of nutrients.  My mom just happened to be dragged along 🙂

Despite our hunger, we checked into our lovely 4-star (rollin’ with the big dogs!) hotel first.  Fortunately, it was just a 5-minute walk from the station, so we brushed our wind-blown locks and headed out for food.  I had read about a highly-rated authentic Swiss restaurant online and directed my mom and I there, as we wandered along the river in Lucerne.

We got there after about 20 minutes, sat down, I looked at the menu…and froze.  The food sounded absolutely disgusting.  I would have rather eaten a dog bone.  I have the biggest fear of being rude, so I didn’t want to leave and be rude, but I also knew that I had only one night in Lucerne and I didn’t want to waste it here at the vomit-inducing restaurant.  I quietly told my mom I wanted to leave and we debated what to do.  Since they hadn’t yet brought us water or anything other than menus, we stood up and left.  I made my mom tell the host that we were leaving because I was too scared of hurting her feelings!  So thank you Mom for taking one for the team 🙂

So out we headed again, past the point of starvation and into a comatose feeling of no hunger, zig sagging across—I swear—the entire city of Lucerne.  We peered at every single restaurant’s menu and not a single one stood up to our refined tastes.  (What do you mean they don’t have salad?  No chicken fingers?  Do they even have a cheeseburger!?  This is ludicrous!!  Okay, just kidding, we weren’t that bad but for real: I’m not paying 89Franc for stroganoff when stroganoff costs like nothing to make.  What happened to my rosti?!)  After we had seen the entire city…twice…we both looked at each other knowing what we wanted to say, but embarrassed that this is what our cultured vacation had come to:

Me: “I kind of just want to go back to the train station and get one of those hot dog things.”

Mom: “Me too.”

Off we went to the train station for dinner.  In Lucerne, Switzerland, filled with thousands of restaurants, with only one night to dine….we ate our dinner from a street vendor at the train station.  I also ate my first hot dog since I was probably five.  I had hit a new tourist low:

Give me back my Chili’s soup!!

Mom and I walked around eating our hot-dog-in-a-pretzel (me) and salami-in-a-pretzel-with-butter (her), enjoying the sunset in Lucerne.  Then we were honestly just exhausted and excited to live it up in our luxurious hotel room.  (Plus, everything in the entire city closes at 6PM apparently.  Nothing was open!)  We snuggled up in our beds, reading, organizing/re-packing our bags for the 40^th time of the trip, and went to bed early.

Lucerne, we came, we saw, we conquered.  Okay, really, we came, we saw, we got bored, and peaced out.  About 18 hours after arriving, we were on our way to Zurich!  That’s not to say that Lucerne isn’t worth a stop.  It was very pretty and very walkable (aka small).  The shopping surprisingly looked amongst the best we had seen the entire trip!  Just unfortunately, everything was closed 🙂  It wouldn’t be first on my list of places to go back to, but it wouldn’t be last (Genova wins that award).