Ninety seconds on Mount Pilatus
The famous circuit is a summer object. Its cogwheel half runs from the middle of May to the end of November and the boat that starts it stops in October, so from December the mountain is a there and back from Kriens.
Reserve the cogwheel train. It leaves Alpnachstad roughly every thirty five minutes and the operator asks for a booking at weekends and in good weather, which are precisely the days anybody wants to be up there. The circuit can be run in either direction: boat and railway up with the cableway and gondolas down to Kriens, or that reversed. Taking the railway on the way up makes it a ride; taking it on the way down makes it a view straight along the track, and the second is the one worth the seat. Either way the boat leg exists only between the middle of May and the middle of October. After that the circuit stops being a loop and becomes a line, out and back the same way.
Explore the rest of Lucerne
A covered wooden footbridge of about 1365 crossing the Reuss at an angle, with a water tower beside it and painted panels in the roof…
A dying lion carved into a rock face in 1821 for the Swiss Guards killed defending the Tuileries in 1792, ten metres long in a quiet pool…
A village on the north shore of Lake Lucerne under the Rigi, with a climate mild enough for figs and palms and no through road until 1860,…