Switzerland - Lucerne part 2

The next morning, Dana and I got up early and decided to wander around the city for a bit before our scheduled excursion up the Stanserhorn. I knew there was an old 14th-century city wall with towers that lay on the outskirts of the city that you could climb up to but I didn't exactly know how to get there. So off we went. 

 We went past this other old wooden bridge - the mill bridge (people would traditionally come in town to have their grain milled here at this bridge) and then after a few false starts, finally found a small garden path leading up the side of a hill at the base of the wall.

 See that tiny, winding path below? No signs or anything to lead us to what we were looking for.

 At last, when we had crested the hill, we saw this opening in the wall with a simple sign on the door that said "Open 8am to 6pm. No smoking." And that was it.
No other directions or inforation for inquisitive tourists -- very typical Swiss we discovered. 

After climbing about 10 flights of these steep, narrow steps like this

and this

we got to this view:

Totally breathtaking. Our legs were feeling a bit like jello at this point but it was so worth it.

This is the wall and the steep, winding path we followed to get to the first tower.

I had read that you had to use a separate entrance to be able to walk along the wall itself so we climbed down those steep stairs and wandered up the path a bit more until we came to another tower with another 10 flights of steep stairs to get up to top of the old wall and a climb a few more towers.
The entire experience was all more rewarding since we really had to look and explore to figure out how to simply visit this treasure.

Feeling quite proud of ourselves (but also quite sore) we headed back to join the spouse group for a trip to the Stanserhorn mountain. We rode up to the top of the mountain in this open-air cabrio car.

You can tell from the view from the top it was quite a ride.

 The view was gorgeous -- we hiked a bit around the top and got this wonderful 360-degree panorama of the valley below.

 These ladies were my exploring buddies - Jessica, Liz, Dana, Me and Judith - we had so much fun together.

 After a fantastic traditional Swiss hikers lunch (a type of soupy macaroni and cheese with potatoes and fried onions on top -- very filling and comfort-foodish) we then traveled to Pilatus Aircraft where the Swiss Air Force put on a 30min private airshow just for us. Just to illustrate how the Swiss work, this is one of my favorite stories. We were all waiting for the airshow to start and could even see the aircraft hovering some distance away when the announcer reminded us "The airshow will promptly begin at 1600 hours." So we waited around for a few minutes until exactly 1600 hours when the airplanes came screaming down the valley as the announcer said "It is now 1600 hours, we can begin." Everything was always right on time in Switzerland -- but they didn't really make a big deal about it, it was just the way things were.

We enjoyed the airshow immensely. I'm sure having the Alps as a backdrop and playing classical music didn't hurt our experience either.