I have more or less worked my way through an alphabet of cities and sites in Europe.
Amsterdam, Brogues, Cotswald, Denmark, Edinburgh, Florence, Granada, Hampton Court Palace, Ilse of Wight, Kefalonia, London, Munich, Nice, Oxford, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Tuscany, Venice, Windsor, Yarmouth, and ending last weekend with my last adventure in Zurich. I've gone from A to Z.
Switzerland has been on my dreamlist for a long time. Mostly because of my obsession with Heidi and Swiss Miss packets as a child, but as I grew up and learned more about this magical country of fondue, chocolate, and snow capped mountains, going there changed from a matter of "if" to "when and with who," and thankfully my ex-pat, ex-nyc gal pal is just as keen on melting cheese and accumulating passport stamps as I.
I didn't exactly know what to expect in Switzerland. There weren't too many sterotypes I could cling too, and everyone I told I was going there reacted with a rather surprised, "why?"
Why?.... Why NOT, I thought!
I had been wanting an Alpine adventure, but everyone's indifference made me a bit worried that it wasn't a good destination after all. But I have learned there really is no such thing as a bad destination in Europe, and I was charmed from the minute we arrived at the Banhoff.
Zurich is the German bit of Switzerland, so it turned out that everything was in German rather than the French I was counting on - but I didn't give a schnitzel the second I realized that meant there would be pretzels.
Due to our delay we had missed dinner and were starving. Ee started towards the hotel, hopeless of encountering anything other than a McDonalds, and then there was the pretzel stand.... lit up like a glowing, shining, answer to our hunger pains. I ran towards the Brezelkonig with open arms, like it was an old friend I hadn't seen in years. German cuisine is extremely underrated. Aside from the pretzels, there is spatzel and apple strudel and basically everything is covered in cheese. Why is there hot a bierhaus in every city?
We put our carb-load to use bright and early the next day, marathon walking around the old city checking out the sites - like the Fraumunster, which is church-name that could only exist in the German language. The city was stunning, but what we really came for was a Swiss mountain experience, so we decided to hike up the Uetliberg, Zurich's mini mountain. The problem was, we didn't exactly pack hiking clothes - but that wasn't going to stop us.
Everyone we passed was in hiking shoes and some form of fleece and spandex, and there I was in jeggings, a studded-pocket flannel, anthropologie riding boots, my leather jacket, and my Rebecca Minkoff bag. My friend was in similar apparel.
It wasn't easy - we got passed by a few 50+ year olds with walking poles. But it was fun.
After making it to the top of the Uetliberg, we hiked two hours to Felsenegg, another panoramoic viewing point that happened to have a little Swiss/German outdoor restaurant, and there I found out my friend had never had fondue. Never! Something clearly had to be done about that!
It was perfection. Sitting outside, high on a mountain in Switzerland, looking out over the lush, green, rolling hills and roaming cows, breathing in the cool, alpine air, skewering hunks of amazing peasant bread and drowning them in bubbling, melty, swiss.
We took the cable car down the mountain, since we were a bit knackered from our 2 hour hike and had both entered a cheese comma. Back in Zurich, we wandered down the Bahnhofsstraße checking out Swiss shops and buying truffles at Confiserie Sprüngli.
The events of the evening are probably best left untold, since I'm not sure I could even accurately recall them. It began with us passing my a cool looking place with an enormous queue of people behind a velvet rope, so we went to the bouncer at the front to ask what was going on inside.
B: Private party.
Us: Oh, okay.
B: Are you on the guestlist?
Us: No, we're from America.
B: Well, would you like to come in?
Us: Uhhh....ok?
We then befriended a group of people of Tel Aviv, where my friend had just went on holiday, who insisted on teaching us how to salsa dance - and the rest is history. It is so fun making friends in Europe. You meet people from all over the world, with the most interesting lives and travel stories. And as an added bonus, I now have an open invitation to visit Israel.
Before we had to leave Sunday night, we spent the afternoon in the lovely city of Lucerne, walking around the Lake and enjoying the scenery.
We enjoyed a delicious, typically Swiss lunch at a lake-side cafe of Aplermagronen. Which is the swiss version of macaroni and cheese - but add in potatoes and serve it with a side of applesauce, wash it down like a Radler. So bad, but oh so good.
So my last trip was indeed a great one! But was also an expensive one.
I learned Switzerland = $$$$
1 swiss francs equals out to a little more than the value of 1 dollar. But the cost of everything was so obscene, I just started pretending like I didn't understand the conversion rate.
If you did convert, it came to about...
$6 for a bottle of water.
$8 for a pretzel.
$20 for an Aperol Spritz
$80 for fondue for two.
So yes, better to not think about it. Luckily we were only there for 2 days! How someone could afford a week in Switzerland, I have no idea. Thankfully I did this trip young, so what was sacrificed to pay for it was a pair of nice shoes, rather a semester of college for my child.
Zurich was the last of my holidays in Europe. Tomorrow I head to Monaco for the weekend, but since it's for work I'm not counting it as holiday - even though fun will definitely be had. I'm being sent there purely to mingle and meet new clients - so I am packing my cutest outfits, highest heels, and plenty of business cards to pass out to the young, handsome, yacht owners.
Carpe Diem!
Amsterdam, Brogues, Cotswald, Denmark, Edinburgh, Florence, Granada, Hampton Court Palace, Ilse of Wight, Kefalonia, London, Munich, Nice, Oxford, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Tuscany, Venice, Windsor, Yarmouth, and ending last weekend with my last adventure in Zurich. I've gone from A to Z.
Switzerland has been on my dreamlist for a long time. Mostly because of my obsession with Heidi and Swiss Miss packets as a child, but as I grew up and learned more about this magical country of fondue, chocolate, and snow capped mountains, going there changed from a matter of "if" to "when and with who," and thankfully my ex-pat, ex-nyc gal pal is just as keen on melting cheese and accumulating passport stamps as I.
I didn't exactly know what to expect in Switzerland. There weren't too many sterotypes I could cling too, and everyone I told I was going there reacted with a rather surprised, "why?"
Why?.... Why NOT, I thought!
I had been wanting an Alpine adventure, but everyone's indifference made me a bit worried that it wasn't a good destination after all. But I have learned there really is no such thing as a bad destination in Europe, and I was charmed from the minute we arrived at the Banhoff.
Zurich is the German bit of Switzerland, so it turned out that everything was in German rather than the French I was counting on - but I didn't give a schnitzel the second I realized that meant there would be pretzels.
Due to our delay we had missed dinner and were starving. Ee started towards the hotel, hopeless of encountering anything other than a McDonalds, and then there was the pretzel stand.... lit up like a glowing, shining, answer to our hunger pains. I ran towards the Brezelkonig with open arms, like it was an old friend I hadn't seen in years. German cuisine is extremely underrated. Aside from the pretzels, there is spatzel and apple strudel and basically everything is covered in cheese. Why is there hot a bierhaus in every city?
Everyone we passed was in hiking shoes and some form of fleece and spandex, and there I was in jeggings, a studded-pocket flannel, anthropologie riding boots, my leather jacket, and my Rebecca Minkoff bag. My friend was in similar apparel.
It wasn't easy - we got passed by a few 50+ year olds with walking poles. But it was fun.
After making it to the top of the Uetliberg, we hiked two hours to Felsenegg, another panoramoic viewing point that happened to have a little Swiss/German outdoor restaurant, and there I found out my friend had never had fondue. Never! Something clearly had to be done about that!
It was perfection. Sitting outside, high on a mountain in Switzerland, looking out over the lush, green, rolling hills and roaming cows, breathing in the cool, alpine air, skewering hunks of amazing peasant bread and drowning them in bubbling, melty, swiss.
We took the cable car down the mountain, since we were a bit knackered from our 2 hour hike and had both entered a cheese comma. Back in Zurich, we wandered down the Bahnhofsstraße checking out Swiss shops and buying truffles at Confiserie Sprüngli.
The events of the evening are probably best left untold, since I'm not sure I could even accurately recall them. It began with us passing my a cool looking place with an enormous queue of people behind a velvet rope, so we went to the bouncer at the front to ask what was going on inside.
B: Private party.
Us: Oh, okay.
B: Are you on the guestlist?
Us: No, we're from America.
B: Well, would you like to come in?
Us: Uhhh....ok?
We then befriended a group of people of Tel Aviv, where my friend had just went on holiday, who insisted on teaching us how to salsa dance - and the rest is history. It is so fun making friends in Europe. You meet people from all over the world, with the most interesting lives and travel stories. And as an added bonus, I now have an open invitation to visit Israel.
Before we had to leave Sunday night, we spent the afternoon in the lovely city of Lucerne, walking around the Lake and enjoying the scenery.
 |
| Lake Lucerne |
 |
| Chapel Bridge |
 |
| lone swan |
We enjoyed a delicious, typically Swiss lunch at a lake-side cafe of Aplermagronen. Which is the swiss version of macaroni and cheese - but add in potatoes and serve it with a side of applesauce, wash it down like a Radler. So bad, but oh so good.
 |
| Aplermagronen |
So my last trip was indeed a great one! But was also an expensive one.
I learned Switzerland = $$$$
1 swiss francs equals out to a little more than the value of 1 dollar. But the cost of everything was so obscene, I just started pretending like I didn't understand the conversion rate.
If you did convert, it came to about...
$6 for a bottle of water.
$8 for a pretzel.
$20 for an Aperol Spritz
$80 for fondue for two.
So yes, better to not think about it. Luckily we were only there for 2 days! How someone could afford a week in Switzerland, I have no idea. Thankfully I did this trip young, so what was sacrificed to pay for it was a pair of nice shoes, rather a semester of college for my child.
Zurich was the last of my holidays in Europe. Tomorrow I head to Monaco for the weekend, but since it's for work I'm not counting it as holiday - even though fun will definitely be had. I'm being sent there purely to mingle and meet new clients - so I am packing my cutest outfits, highest heels, and plenty of business cards to pass out to the young, handsome, yacht owners.
Carpe Diem!
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