Mt. Titlis boasts a three-stage cable car that takes you to 10,000 feet at the upper station.  Getting there is a thrill.  Being there is breathtaking in both the literal and figurative sense.  The thick fog enveloping the mountain will make it all the more eerie.

The ladies of the party on line to board the first stage.  Note the flood of oriental tourists.  We are about to witness the pinnacle of 'me first, screw everybody else'.

Above the mid-station for stage one, it gets very steep.  Kathy Oleksy is, at this point, nearly catatonic, refusing even to look out the window.  Acrophobia.

Having switched from the 4-person gondola to the 80-person gondola and then to the 40-person rotating gondola, we've arrived at the summit, 10,000 ft., 3,020 meters high.

There are outdoor activities appropriate for the top of a mountain, and even a soft rain doesn't seem to dampen the enthusiam of these tourists as they carefully make their way across the icy ground.  We have lunch, shop for souvenirs, enjoy the (heavily obscured by fog) view before our guide gathers all her chicks and herds us toward the cablecar station for the downtrip, apologizing all the while for the horrible weather.

Below us, we can see the parking lot filled with buses ready to whisk us back to Lucerne.  Oh, well, we're almost out of Swiss Francs anyway.  Might as well go home.

While this trip wasn't perfect, the few things that rated a complaint were not enough to make anyone say 'ruined'.  There's nothing you can do about the weather except to complain — fruitlessly.  The occasional glitch is going to happen regardless how well anyone plans;  so saith Mr. Murphy.  Someone else's choices will never align 100% with those you or I might make.  Be happy when there's substantial agreement.

I miss the necessity of doing my own trip planning.  On a package tour such as this, an independent traveler has to surrender some autonomy.  While Viking River Cruises handled most problems professionally, I still flinch at the idea of being one person on a tour that is planned with 200 people in mind.

Yes, we may do it again, now that we know what to expect and can steel ourselves for group travel.  We'll pack lighter, and bring home more chocolate.