(View on Cruise... to be discussed below)
Per Ky's Request - & I do apologis/ze in advance for the sideways pics. Can't figure out how to get Blogspot to accept them after I rotate them. Maybe it's just because it's late & I'm tired. You'll just have to turn your head:
The trip: PHENOMENAL! The company: Couldn't have asked for better!
We flew from Dublin to Zurich and got straight on the train to Vevey, which is on the top of Lake Geneva, in the french-speaking part of Switzerland (heretofore called "SW"). We got in around 8:30 and it was raining a little. Apparently, neither of us were expecting anything else BUT rain - I've been living in Eire ('nough said) and apparently, everywhere she's been has been rainy - so it didn't kill us. We checked into our hotel (which was right above the train station - about a 1min walk) and went wandering the city looking for food. We found a tiny ethnic restaurant (mediterranean of some sort) and ordered food from a foreign menu. Not a good idea for me and my picky self. The picture showed a gyro meat platter, but when it came, the meat was more like chopped, fatty pork. So Lyn switched with me (her sandwich had gyro meat in it) and I made it maybe 4 bites before I had to ask for a glass of milk because it was SO spicy! I ate over half the sandwich. not bad. And I asked for the milk in french! :) I did conveniently forget the part about how as soon as we sat down, 2 old men (60ish) got up from the table behind us and started talking to us in french. We told him we don't speak much french, so he decided that touching my arm and making "booby" gestures at Lyn was appropriate behaviour. What is it with me and old pervs touching me?????
then we wandered to the lake (about 3-4 blocks) and around a bit of the lake and then up this canal that was feeding into the lake back to the hotel. All in the rain, of course! and settled in to make our plans for the half-day we had in Vevey. The next day was Saturday and not rainy! It was cloudy and cold, but no raindrops, so YAY! We wandered the "historical" town which looks exactly like I imagine France to resemble - Lyn has been to France and agreed. There was an old-timey carousel planted right on the lakefront at the beginning of the old town. The area was filled with windy cobble-stoned 'roads' and ornately detailed french architectural bldgs with tiny little shops in all the ground floors. While wandering, we went to a museum that told the history of winemaking in Vevey and all about this crazy festival they have (once a generation) about every 25yrs or so. We watched a video that really entertained us and Lyn mentioned wanting to go to the next one (2024 or so)... then we walked along the lake back to the carousel and had a lakeside kiosk "lunch" of a hotdog inside a french baguette (literally inside - they pierce a hole in a half-baguette and drop the hotdog into it - lol - and a banana/nutella crepe, while we enjoyed tiny little tantrums of several small children walking by... haha! I should probably mention that we were within spitting distance of the Swiss Alps, by the way... absolutely AMAZING!!!
(Yes, that's a giant fork standing in Lake Geneva)
After that, we hopped on the train back to Zurich. At the Zurich Hoptbahnhof (train station - now enters the german portion of my weekend), we needed to buy tickets to our hotel and we wanted to buy tickets for travel around town while we where there. The guy at the info desk was USELESS, so we wandered around and found an actual ticket counter. I chose a window with a Cory Wensley look-alike, BECAUSE he looked like Cory. Lyn came over and this guy was just too cute and so helpful! We got a 24hr ZurichCard and a one-way ticket to the hotel for that evening. The ZurichCard also got us free or discounted entry into many places, so we were happy. It cost 11euro/17chf. I (obviously) took a photo of "little cory" - as he was affectionately known thereafter. :)
("Little Cory")
We checked into the Swissotel around 9pm and met the cutest concierge, Sascha (no picture of him, sadly), who offered to make our dinner reservations for us. We decided on TexMex 'cause it doesn't exist in Ireland. Went upstairs, unpacked/threw all of our belongings all over the room, got cleaned up because we had to walk by Sascha to leave the hotel, and went an ate burritos & burgers! :) Things I learned in Cheyennes (the restaurant): they pronounce it Cayenne in Zurich and, Swiss restaurants do not have a concept of "non-smoking". We are pretty sure that we got lung cancer from just sitting at the table.
Back to hotel to plan the next day and take a bath in a REAL bathtub for the 3rd time since July!!!! (it really is the little things...)
Sunday, we made plans to go to 5 places. They were spread out all over the city, so we wanted to factor in travel times. It was supposed to be 16/61degrees and ended up being 18/64degrees... SO NICE! And SUNSHINY!!!! :) Our first stop was to the top of Mt Uetliberg, which is right inside the city. We got off the train, took some scenic shots and one of Lyn sitting in the kiddie swings that was too cute, and got right back on the train. lol. The rest of the mountain was hiking trails and we had neither the time, the desire, nor the footwear for that.
(From top of Mt. Uetliberg)
Stop #2 was to a cruise around the lake (not lake geneva - actually, I don't know the name of the lake at all... I'll have to look it up - I did: it's called Zurichsee). The boat was actually a part of Zurich public transit, so it was included in our ZurichCard, woot! It was 90-minutes in the sunshine with a backdrop of the Swiss Alps and tiny little mountain villages at mini-ports around the lake. One port held the Lindt Manufacturing Plant, which made us happy! This boat trip was too cool for many reasons, one of which included the billion opportunities I had to take pictures of cute boys. I think I could make a calendar of Zurich men. Lyn and I decided SW gave Eire a run for its money in male prettiness. We were sitting at a table with 3 chairs, so we were visited twice by random people. One was an old man (not perv) who was on the trip with his daughter and grandson. We talked about his daughters (one lives in Toronto) and what they do for a bit, his grandson came and visited for a second, and then he left when a seat became available near his family. A little while later, a cute Turkish man who was from Switzerland sat down. Turns out he is getting his MA in Sociology in Turkey and comes back to SW to visit his family one week out of every year. He was great fun, and of course, I don't take photos of the ones I actually TALK to! *sigh*
(One view from Cruise)
After the cruise, we were waiting for our tram and saw a mini-parade of tiny children all dressed up in various costumes, so we took pictures. :) And went to stop #3: Museum Strauhof. It was a museum that had rotating displays involving the arts - literature, history, photography, etc - so we thought we'd check it out. The current display was about a woman I'd never heard of (Annemarie Schwartzenbach) and was completely in German. I did not get much out of it until the very end, when I realised that she was a photojournalistic-style traveler in the 30s & 40s. I am not sure if she was a photojournalist by trade or what, but the last room had her photos from the Southern USA, Africa and other places I can't remember - and these photos were sooooo good! All black & white and mostly about poverty. Once I figured that much out, I wasn't so blaisee about the display. It was just that for the first 3 or 4 rooms, it was mostly just photos of her or stories/letters written in german that were useless to me. I have an eerie feeling that german will be my next language. MAN!
On our way to our last stop, our tram got stuck behind a marching band. We were very entertained! When we left the Museum Strauhof, we realised that there was, in fact a real parade going through the city! So we wandered around downtown in the warm sunshiny weather and watched the little tiny kids in their costumes and the various marching bands (even a couple bagpipe groups!) - lots of pics & videos! I asked a "polizei" (I think is how it's spelled?)/police officer what the parade was for, and it turns out, we were smack in the middle of the Springtime Festival! lol! What great timing! There were sidewalk kiosks everywhere, so for lunch we had Wurst. Mine was Knobli (garlic) Wurst - and by 'wurst', I mean literally, a sausage wrapped in wax paper! After the parade, we had chocolate dipped fruit (bananas in our case) and decided that we didn't need to go to stop #4 (Swiss National Museum), so we just wandered around an amazing city in the sunshine with thousands of people around...I must say that the experience itself was incomparable to the Dublin St Patrick's Day parade, but the actual parade was MUCH better in Zurich. And it was so much simpler. And at the end, there was a snowman sitting on a pile of branches. When I saw it, I remembered reading about this snowman in a tour book on the way to Vevey - and at the end of the festival (the day we leave Zurich), they burn the snowman to signal the end of winter - YAY! :)
(View on Post-Parade Walk)
Our final stop was the Zoo. We didn't know if it would be worth it to go or not, but we had the time and it was right near James Joyce's grave, so we hopped on the tram. It was not worth it to pay 11chf for an hour in the zoo, but the cemetery was SO cool! It was like a garden, with fountains and variety of plants and trees and birds singing, and all the gravestones were different - very individualised. There were many famous people buried there, but we only knew Joyce. His gravestone was very simple and there was a statue of Joyce in the background. After a bit in the cemetery, we hopped on the tram and decided t go our separate ways for a couple hrs. I went back to the hotel, went upstairs to the 32 floor and hopped into the jaccuzzi, where I had an almost 360degree view of Zurich city and a panorama of the Swiss Alps as the sun set. *sigh* and then went into the aromatherapy wet sauna for a bit... Lyn had some shopping she wanted to do, so we made reservations for the (world's worst service) Italian restaurant and met back up after our mini-excursions to go to supper.
(Joyce's Grave)
The italian restaurant was good food, but not very spectacular - and I am not even going to waste my time complaining about the crappy service - the part I enjoyed the most was the walk to the restaurant from the hotel, when we saw these people out in a courtyard playing chess with GIANT chess peices! They had to pick up the piece, walk over to a new square, and put the piece down. They were probably 2ft tall at the shortest... I enjoyed seeing that. :) Back to the hotel around 10, I read for class while Lyn packed. And the next morning wasn't terribly eventful. Unless you count the fact that we waited around until 9:30for a shoe store to open at 9am, because they were decently priced, cutesy shoes... we have our priorities! lol. Then we checked out and went our separate ways - Lyn by train to Berlin and me to the Airport to read until my 4pm flight.
All three mornings, the hotels offered buffet breakfasts. The Swissotel breakfast was sooooooo good! I found a new love for muesli. They mixed it into berry yogurt and it made me happy.
So not much happened on my trip - hah! You asked for it! :)
but I will be in a MUCH more convenient place. I will have a microwave and a bathtub and I will only be a 15min walk from the grocery store instead of a 45min walk, woot! :) (fyi, I am being forced to move out of my place, so it's not necessarily because I am making a conscious choice, but I am grateful for the change, regardless!)
