the Lions of Lucerne

So, this afternoon (Sunday, by the way) I called my dentist and described to him my PAIN.

"Sounds like you need a root canal," he said cheerfully. He's a cheerful man.

He called in a couple prescriptions, and now I'm taking an antibiotic and Tylenol/codeine, which takes the edge off the PAIN, but doesn't eliminate it. This seems like a good time to revisit Switzerland, to get my mind off the PAIN.

I enjoyed photographing the lions of Lucerne.  They were all over the place, fighting, roaring, grimacing, sleeping, crying and dying.

These three were all on the same building:

These two were battling above a church door, near our hotel. I couldn't decide which photo so share (flowers or no?) so I included both.

These were on the old city wall, roaring at one another across a coat of arms:

On a door...

I've saved Lucerne's most beautiful lion for last. "The dying Lion of Lucerne" is about thirty feet long. It was carved to honor a group of Swiss mercenaries who died in Paris, at the Tuileries, in 1792.

Long ago, Mark Twain stood at the same spot we did, looking at the lion. He didn't have a nice camera like we do, but he didn't need one, because he made people see with words.  He called this "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world."