Switzerland Days 1 & 2
I had to be up ridiculously early on Thursday, because I was accompanying my sometime Meetup companion.. to Switzerland! She's a big fan of Jakub Józef Orlinski, who was appearing in Agrippina at the Zurich Opera House yesterday - and as she'd never been to Switzerland before, and I was dying to see it again, we were taking a few days there. Now, when I say I had to be up early.. I didn't actually get to bed! By the time I'd blogged, washed my hair, and gotten through as much work as possible - she was messaging to say she was already at the airport.. so, soon as I figured I'd done as much as I could, I got dressed and legged it out there myself.
We were flying Swissair from London City, conveniently - albeit quite early - which I booked with Booking.com - who gave me a link to check in on the Swissair website, where my details didn't appear at all! I had to wait for Swissair to send me a reminder email that I hadn't added my passport information, and click the link in that, to progress. Bus and DLR got me there on a chilly morning, and I zipped through to find her waiting at a random gate - they leave gate announcements until the last minute, here. When our gate was finally announced, we made our way up there - and whom should we run into but one of the organisers from Up in the Cheap Seats (Jo)! who'd had the idea to head on the same trip on the same day. Small world, indeed..
One surprising thing I found about Swissair was that they let buggies on board - I'm used to seeing them carried in the hold and removed separately afterwards, for collection. And it was a damn small plane.. which was why they offered, and I accepted, to have my trolley bag placed in the hold for free. Anyway, it's not a long flight - 90 minutes or so from London to Zurich - during which time we were given free water and, yay, a free chocolate.. Lovely to see some things haven't changed. Of course, most exciting for me was when we started to see mountains:
It was bright and sunny in Zurich:
We parted ways with Jo at the airport train station, and got one of the frequent trains into the centre - it's only a 10-minute journey. We were staying in the Aldstadt Hotel, booked through Vio. Ooh, the sheer luxury of having the means to travel in Switzerland without having to stay in a hostel! This hotel, itself, was only about a quarter of an hour's walk from the main train station - but with our luggage, we took a tram; there are a few that run right between them. That, mind you, presented its own problems, as we initially tried to buy tickets online, on one of the most complicated websites ever! Things became much easier when we just bought our tram tickets from the machines at any stop - it's only a two-click operation.. and with every machine in Switzerland now taking cards, we hardly had to deal with currency at all.
The tram deposited us a hop, skip and jump from the hotel - where the receptionist showed us where the lift was, and the intriguing key system, whereby you have to insert the front door key to extract the room key, and vice versa. The room itself was a little cramped, but with good WiFi (once I figured out I was misspelling the password), and we tidied ourselves a bit and went out to explore the Altstadt.
There are a lot of steep streets, but one in particular looked forbidding:
We were very near the River Limmat:
Our perambulations also took us to the Opera House, where we were booked for yesterday:
Well, we had to think about food - Weisser Wind looked appealing, and some people sitting outside recommended it to us, but when we asked, we discovered they were booked up for an hour and a half. We decided we'd better book a table for later, and that we could change our minds if we found anything better - but lo, we didn't; we fancied Swiss cuisine, and everywhere that did it was also booked. So we ended up coming back to Weisser Wind.
They take their branding seriously - it's on the glasses, the coasters, the menus.. and we wondered whether the name had something to do with greyhounds, which were everywhere:
Now, we were lucky to be drinking together, because glasses of wine in Switzerland, it transpires, only come in a 100ml size - smaller than a small glass in the UK! We chose the cheapest bottle - we were to discover that we'd be paying between 51 and 59CHF for a bottle everywhere, and came to regard that as normal (it's slightly less in £, slightly more in €..). But oh, the wine we chose was a cracker - from the first sip, it was amazing, and ended up being the best we had for the entire trip:
The pumpkin and apple soup I had was amazing, the tartness of the apple balancing the sweetness of the pumpkin - and we both had wiener schnitzel in a cream and mushroom sauce: me with noodles, my companion with rosti. (I was a bit jealous about that.) All delicious. For dessert, I had the coupe colonel - ice cream with vodka. The waiter brought the bottle to the table and said "say when"! I let him continue till he decided it was enough.. ;-) Not a cheap meal, but it was fantastic - as we told the head chef when he came to us, doing a round of tables at the end of the night.. With bare wooden floors, it was a bit noisy, but wow, I would recommend this place to anyone, it was fantastic. We did notice there was no background music - which proved to be a feature of Swiss restaurants. And so we wended our way back to the hotel, happily.
Friday morning started painfully - I'd realised, the night before, that the pillow was really flimsy, but woah, the pain in my neck when I woke! Add to that the rock-hard mattress, that left me with a pain in both hips - when I woke, I seriously couldn't move at first! Well, I determined to use my usual trick of sleeping rolled up in the quilt from then on, so that half is under me, which has worked with hard mattresses in the past. And I figured I could put something under the pillow to give it some structure. For now though, it was a stiff and sore start to the day..
I don't believe in hotel breakfasts that you have to pay separately for - so we went out for breakfast, stopping at Gran Cafe Motta, en route to the station:
Not hard to get a table really, it's quite large - service is really slow, though; you wouldn't want to be in a hurry. I ordered a croque monsieur and a lemonade. The lemonade was quite insipid - the croque monsieur was a revelation! Seriously gorgeous.. another memorable dish.
I'd seen a little of Bern before, and wanted to explore more - I'd seen glimpses of what looked like a medieval city. So, after breakfast, we headed in the direction of the main station again.
We were to discover that the initial price quoted on machines - the "from" price - bears little relation to the final price, which, if a last-minute booking, can be huge. Well, never mind, we were on holiday.. and the train journey takes between an hour, and an hour and a half, depending on whether it's an express. In Bern, which was a bit chillier, we started to see our first winter sports enthusiasts, in the station, heading for the slopes with skis and snowboards. For sightseeing, we trusted to my old Swiss guidebook, the Visitor's Guide, which has a suggested walking route - which turned out to be inspired. Basically, most of the main sights can be reached quite quickly by walking in pretty much a straight line from the station - the trick is to start in the right direction, there being many exits from the station square. The Spitalgasse is what you're looking for.
Our first stop was the Baroque Church of the Holy Ghost:
Now, Bern Altstadt is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and delightfully dotted along the streets are medieval statues! Which, as my guidebook helpfully points out, the trams, buses, and cars navigate around as best they can. We were also to discover that crossing the street is a relaxed affair in Switzerland - the trams ring a warning bell, and everyone else just gives way to pedestrians..
We proceeded pretty much in a straight line, catching intriguing glimpses down side streets:
Plenty of towers on our route:
And not only in the middle of the road, but also on the sides of buildings can you see sculptures:
The celebrated clock tower has one of those famous displays, which we didn't stay for:
And lo, we came upon a parade! Apparently sponsored by a beer company, it was quite the spectacle, filling the town with music and colour - and confetti, conveniently supplied by stalls along the way:
More medieval art:
..culminating in the Rathaus:
Well, neither of us having slept well, and both stiff and sore from our hard mattresses, we were now exhausted - so we called it quits at that point, figuring we'd seen the essentials, and headed back in search of food. Mercifully, there's a heap of restaurants on Barenplatz, which have the advantage, catering to tourists as they do, of not closing in the afternoons as the more traditional ones do! We fell into the very nearest one, Piazza Italia, where we bucked the trend by asking to eat indoors - it was a bit chilly outside.
We both had steak - which turned out to be really tasty - and for dessert, presented with a Movenpick menu, I went for ice cream. Oh my goodness, another revelation - the country of great chocolate also produces great ice cream, it seems. The glass in which my sundae was served also displayed a cute Alpine scene:
And so we crawled back to Zurich and to the hotel, hoping for a better night's sleep.. a lot of soldiers on the train back, and even what looked like an army band, as we approached our hotel, the tuba player giving a solo as they made their way along..
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