Zurich, a City I'm very Fond(ue) of
We started the morning off how you would any normal vacation—by stuffing ourselves with lots of food. Our hotel, The Renaissance Zurich Tower Hotel, had a large spread with everything from salad (ew. Who eats salads anymore?) and eggs, to bacon and cheese (we are in Switzerland after all)
We headed just outside of quiet Zurich to the even quieter municipality of Adliswil. When I say quiet, I mean empty streets and only the sound of crunching leaves as you walk. Why so quiet? It’s Sunday in Switzerland! We soon learned almost everything shuts down on Sunday, including the grocery stores, and basically the Swiss go into hibernation mode. A valid excuse to Netflix binge and lay in bed all day? I’m down!
However, we had plenty to see and do, so we did not join the Swiss in hibernation, but rather started the day by going up to Felsenegg via gondola lift, just a fancy name for a cable car. It took about 3 to 5 minutes to make it to the top and wow! The views were unreal.
We spent some time up there, praised the Lord that the weather was cooperating with us, and enjoyed a hot chocolate at the top.
We then made our way back down to finally explore Zurich. Contrary to popular belief, Zurich is not the capital of Switzerland, but it is still remains the largest city in Switzerland.
We did a quick walking tour of the city, including my personal highlights, Bahnhofstrasse and Lindenhof. Bahnhofstrasse is the shopping street *cue angelic choir*. It was like Saks Fifth Avenue on steroids. I’m talking Dior, Christian Louboutin, Gucci, etc. Get this—It costs 10,000 CHF a MONTH to rent a storefront on Bahnhofstrasse. See, I wasn’t kidding when I told you Switzerland was expensive!
We followed the maze of cobblestone paths, and like two little old grandmas out of breath from the incline, we eventually found our way to Lindenhof. Lindenhof is a beautiful overlook of Zurich and the river Limmat. Also, located up there is one of the twelve hundred water fountains in Zurich, so if you’re a little thirsty from the hike up, no worries, the city has you covered!
Our walking tour ended, so we did some exploring on our own. We headed towards Lake Zurich only to end up a little intimidated when we saw about 75 police officers, fully geared up with machine guns and bulletproof vests lining the street. Apparently they were preparing for a possible demonstration. Whew! I was a little scared there for a second. You never know with all the terrorist attacks going on lately.
Since our stomachs were starting to make whale noises, aka growl, we decided it was time to find a place to eat. It was a lot harder than we thought because of the whole ‘Sunday everything is closed’. We almost had to resort to a McDonalds, ugh.. but then magically we found a little café inside of the train station that was open. So we picked up some paninis with mysterious, foreign fillings, plopped ourselves on a bench right along the river, and yet again stuffed ourselves. Classic.
After a nice, long walk back to the hotel, and after using the Swiss version of a port-o-potty (think stereotypical Japanese toilets with buttons that do all sorts of random things), we ended our day at the hotel sauna. Ahhhh..
xoxo,
Em