Jul 29, 2009

The Beauty of Zurich, Switzerland

Saturday morning started off with a bang at 4:30am... yes, I know, that is waaaay too early for us! But our airplane left out of the Bonn/Cologne airport, which meant we needed to take a bus a little further north. Even though we aren't morning people, it was good that we arrived in Zurich around 8:00, which gave us all day to explore! We started our day with a 35 minute tram ride from the airport to the Zurich Hbf. We soon realized if we took a train it would have taken about 11 minutes, but oh well, we were there to see the scenery right?

We arrived at our hotel (Otter Hotel) and learned it would take about an hour for our room to be ready, so we left our bags and went out to walk around town. We first came across a very large flea market that seemed to go on forever full of all sorts of little nic nacs. From there we just started walking down random streets to see what we ran into. We were all beginning to get hungry, but began noticing we better be prepared to pay a good penny for the food we ate. After walking around for a while and realizing we weren't going to find anything under the $15 mark, we stopped at the Spaghetti Factory to grab a bite to eat. I guess if it's going to be expensive it better at least be good, and that it was! The weather was a little sketchy when we first arrived, so we had to end up moving indoors to finish our yummy spaghetti.

From the Spaghetti Factory we walked back to our hotel to check into our rooms and take about a 2 hour nap. Then we went back out to walk around the Zurich Lake and have a marvelous view of the Swiss Alps. Since the sky was still somewhat cloudy, you could only see a faint outline of the mountains, but that was good enough for us. Plus we knew Sunday was going to be a really clear day, which would give us a perfect view. Everywhere you went there were always people either sitting along the water or feeding the hundred of hungry swans and ducks. It would have been so easy to just sit on a wall and take in the scenery all day, but of course Andrew and I just can't sit still while in another country! We walked by the lake until we ran out of sidewalks and then headed back towards Altsadt (Old Town).

We began to walk down Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse because it's known as one of the world's most expensive and exclusive shopping avenues. Obviously we had no plans on buying anything, just to experience another part of Zurich. Everywhere you looked were high-end stores and people that seemed to just walk out of a fashion magazine. Ever since being in Europe, Andrew and I always feel under dressed, but we especially felt this while being in Switzerland. After experiencing the lifestyle we will never have, we walked by some churches before heading back towards our hotel for a rest. While on our walk back, we found some fresh fruit for sale, so we had to stop and buy some.

Once at our hotel, Andrew and I decided we wanted more of what Zurich had to offer! We took a stroll back towards Lake Zurich and hopped on one of the many pedal boats and took one out on the water. We rented one for an hour and basically just pedaled around next to the hundreds of sail boats, other pedal boats, and the occasional cruise boat. It was a lot of fun, but it was time to find some food to bring back to the hotel and eat. We found a small place that sold all sorts of pizzas, so we grabbed four different kinds and a soda for each of us and walked back to the hotel to chow down.

After we ate, we all kind of just sat around trying to give our legs a rest and went to bed earlier knowing we had a long day ahead of us! By this time we were loving Zurich!


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