Vineet's London-Europe Tour 2017 Day 9 (Mount Titlis and Luzern)

13th June

Entrance to the Cable Car towards Mount Titlis

After having rested the earlier day, we were all charged and excited to go to Mount Titlis today 😃 We dressed in our snow boots and carried our jackets as it was quite warm in the valley. I also carried our regular shoes and sandals to change into later, as it was really warm. We reached Mount Tilis base after a bus ride of around 50 mins and before we knew, we were ushered into the ice cable car and off we zoomed up towards the mountains! It was beautiful, thrilling, exciting and a never-before experience! At the second station we changed into the #Rotair, which is the only revolving ice cable car in the whole world! Until now, we had NO problem at all moving Vinsy in his wheelchair. It was all so smooth, unbelievably accessible. 😀

Then we reached to where the snow was by lift from the rotair station.So now,there was a nice little open restaurant out there with the floor made of iron grills and wood and then there was the snow. So now what to do...how to take Vin into the snow? Simply drag his wheelchair in the snow as far as Papa could. When he got tired, we had reached half way towards where road to the ice-flyer and snow-activities started. We couldn't think of dragging Vin till the "Glacier Park". It was just too far....

Thats the Glacier Park in the background where we couldn't take Vin

So we perched in there and Papa suggested we make a small snow-man. Mum and Tia got to work with some help from Vin and soon enough we had an 'OLAF' ready complete with Vin's cap and papa's shades on it! He looked too cute and endearing, so other tourists also started taking fotos with it! We felt accomplished 😌 Then Tia started going up towards the topmost part and mummy went too so she could get some videos from there to show Vin later.

Yup. So we couldn't enjoy the snow-activities at all and we had thought we would.... It was sort of disappointing....but never mind... 😔

LAKE LUCERNE

We had lunch in one of the Pizzeria there (which was exorbitantly priced) and then we moved towards the town of Lucerne. It was a beautiful town and we had all afternoon and evening to ourselves. We did some shopping there and decided to spend some time sitting quietly by the lake (Lucern). It was a beautiful view and we didn't want to move from there. But then, our Tour Guide had mentioned to us about the " CHAPEL BRIDGE (KAPELLBRUCKE)  nearby and so off we went towards it. THERE WAS NO RAMP at the entrance and there were at least 6-8 steps. Papa told me and Tia to take a look inside and come back, but we don't do stuff like that. Where Vin can't go, we can't go too...not all the time.

ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL BRIDGE (NO RAMP)

So we took the pathway beside the lake and the Chapel Bridge and came to another bridge which had 2 steps leading to it and we could carry Vin onto it.We roamed on the other side and found nothing interesting, so we returned the same way. This time we got ourselves a helper who helped transfer Vin the 2 steps down. As I write this, I am thinking maybe I should have gone into the Chapel Bridge and checked for some accessible path... At least they could have put in a sign if there was at all!! 😐

Then it was time to leave for dinner.

After note - When we returned back home to India, I wrote a letter to Mount Titlis authorities about how disappointed and disheartened we were that Vin could not go upto the ice flyer or the snow activities, and how it would be nice if they could arrange a ramp or something to make it happen for people on wheelchairs. And I was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply from them saying how they were looking into the matter and were as eager to help people on wheelchairs reach the.....
Well,  that certainly brightened me up 😃 At least they were thinking....  And it also reminds me to write back to them about a more feasible idea that I got the other day when I was watching a few videos of mount Titlis on YouTube .Hope it convinces them soon!! 🙏😇

Watch our video here-