Luxury escorts in Lucerne

Lucerne is the postcard that turns out to be true — the Chapel Bridge, the painted facades, the lake steamers easing out toward mountains that look arranged for the view. But the town the visitor queues through has a quieter parallel version: the KKL's concert hall, acoustically among the finest in Europe, with its summer festival drawing the world's orchestras; the Grand Hotel National's long dining room above the quay; and twenty minutes around the shore, the Bürgenstock resort on its ridge, where the infinity edge of the Alpine spa hangs five hundred metres over the water.

Our Lucerne engagements move between these registers. A festival evening — concert first, supper after — is the town at its best and needs booking the moment programmes are published. A Bürgenstock stay is its own form: two or three days on the ridge with the lake below and no reason to descend. And an ordinary Tuesday has its pleasures too — the old town after the day-crowds leave belongs to the people staying the night. Companions here speak German and English, and the Rigi and Pilatus boats make an effortless afternoon.