Hotel Friedheim

We arrived at 17:20 to find reception closed and the building in which it was located locked up. This building also housed the bar and restaurant; also closed, despite being told that they were fully available seven days per week. Apparently all three are closed every Tuesday and Wednesday. This would be acceptable if we were booking a CHF 50 a night hostel, but this was a CHF 275 a night hotel. In all our years of travelling, were have never experienced this before. Then, after finding the key on an outside table, the room were were allocated was nothing like the rooms shown on the web site we booked through. The building was old, smelt of decay and was in serious need of renovation. The furniture was old, smelt and there was no AC. We might not have minded so much if we had been asked to pay a reasonable rate, but this was a premium rate room that was nowhere near premium. Although we originally intended to stay four days, we checked out immediately the next morning a found a far better hotel at a similar rate a kilometre away, right on Lake Lucerne. To be avoided . . .

Hotel Friedheim, where you go because you like Swiss precision, peace and quiet, ample parking space and cleanness. But you mainly go there for Mount Rigi, with its stunning views and walks and because it costs you the price of a decent mortgage to pay a hotel on the Mount itself. And honestly, the views from Hotel Friedheim on both the lake and the Mount are equally stunning, you even get to park you car AND swim in the Lake, for FREEEEEEE ! So at least we got the feeling Switzerland was expensive but without the need of being oil billionaire or equivalent.