We drove from Lucerne to Bern on this day. It was a beautiful drive and we seemed to be taking the back roads. Willisau was our first stop and it was an unscheduled stop for us. There were Roman settlements near here in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In 1302, three Hasenburg brothers founded the town as a fortified town. They were granted the rights by the Habsburgs. Later, they were granted the rights to hold markets in town.

Today, Willisau is still a small town with perhaps 8,000 residents. You can still see the entrances to the fortified town, under the clock tower. Willisau is also in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. The surrounding area is mostly agricultural but also very forested.

We were told that Willisau hosts an international jazz festival and one of the oldest carnivals in Switzerland. We prowled around and had a very nice visit here, but a relatively short one.

I'll start with a few photos of the main part or their Old Town area. If you look beneath the clock tower, you can see the thickness of the old town wall. We were here early in the morning, so the town was very quiet. The two women in the photo are part of our nine-person tour group.

Every town that we visited had water fountains where everyone used to get all their water and where people still fill up their water bottles.

Willisau is famous as the home of the Willisauer Ringli, a traditional Swiss sweet cookie. They make dozens of different types of cookies. We visited the factory and store, saw their cookie making operation, and tasted handfuls of their cookies. As Vicky was listening to our guide, I was off taking photos. I came back to Vicky and she said, "Hold out your hand, palm up". I did that and she put a cookie in the palm of my hand. Then she told me to smash the cookie with my other elbow. I did that. I then looked down and saw the cookie broken into 4 pieces. Vicky said that because of that, I would be allowed to live in Willisau. She said that was a requirement of the town to live there. She did it but the cookie didn't break into 4 pieces, so she couldn't live in Willisau. I only got a photo of Vicky taking a cookie from one of the cookie tasting bins. It's an interesting tradition but I decided not to live in Willisau.

We visited a church in town. Swiss towns tended to have lots of churches, too many to keep track of. But in this church in Willisau, they had pictures along the side walls. The picture below was just to the left of the main altar. I was surprised to see a picture of people playing cards, and gambling, in church. They had several such pictures, and the idea was that it was bad to gamble and you shouldn't be doing it.

We were walking down the main street when Vicky stopped at the Choclatier below and we had the following conversation.

Vicky: "I'm going to stop in here".

Bill: "That's no surprise to me."

Vicky: "Why do you say that?"

Bill: "Because I'd rather walk a dog through a forest than walk you past a line of chocolate stores."

Vicky: "Why would you say that?"

Bill: "Because the dog wouldn't stop at EVERY tree!"