Switzerland April 13, 2007

whew.  I think I am still processing the fact that I went to Switzerland, I don´t think I´m even processing day two yet.  But, nevertheless the long story of my amazing vacation…

After a stressful week of planning out the vacation, finding buses, trains, hostels, etc.  I left my house at 11 pm Thursday evening looking forward to some wonderful sleep in the airport-NOT.  Unfortunately we realized that our flight from Malaga was too early and we would have to take a bus the night before to get there on time.  Excellent first night of sleep in the airport.  It was okay, I slept as good as can be for the very comfy airport benches, however when we got up and passed through security finally at  7 am, I realized that I didn´t have my cell phone.  great.  I spent the next 30 minutes frantically searching the airport for it, no such luck.  Incredibly distraught that I had lost or somebody had stolen my cellphone, I got on my plane to Switzlerand determined to make the best of the vacation.  After an uneventful flight that I spent completely passed out on the airplane, Amanda and I arrived in Switzerland.  As soon as I stepped off the airplane I was amazed by how clean the air was.  I didn´t expect that I would be able to feel such a difference, but I could definitely tell that the air was so pure and fresh and everything was so clean here.  It was a beautiful smell and fresh feeling.   After gathering our luggage and passing through customs, we began to complete the beginning parts of any journey–getting a map and getting money.  Once we had both we made our way to the train station in Basel to buy our tickets to Lucerne.  We decided to buy a ticket for later that afternoon and use our couple hours of free time to go to Germany.  Germany is only like 20 minutes away by bus, so why not?  It was nice to, because the tram took us around Basel a bit so we got to see how pretty it was.  The river was gorgeous and eveyrthing so fresh and clean and mountainy looking.  It was beautiful.  When we arrived in the little town in germany we realized we had about 45 minutes.  We walked up and down the streets exploring some shops, taking pictures, and picking flowers.  It seemed like a really neat and cute town.  During our German adventure we found this amazing organic health food store with SAMPLES.  It was soooo good!  I wish I could go back there again and again.  It was absolutely delicious and friendly and healthy and organic.  It was perfect especially since I miss Trader Joe´s and Whole Foods.  After this we had to head back to Basel to catch our train to Lucerne.  Our tram was a little late, so we had to sprint to catch our train and we just made it on.  The train ride to Lucern was absolutely beautiful and peaceful.  I was able to sit back, relax, and journal a bit while I watched the most amazing scenery pass by me. We arrived in Lucerne at about 5:30 and made our way to our hostel. Our hostel was more of a hotel in dorm style rooms and it was really nice. After resting a bit since we were exhausted not having had a good night of sleep, we headed out to enjoy the evening in Lucerne. It was pretty chilly and verrrry windy down by the lake but soooo beautiful. The city was fairly quiet, but we walked along the river and on the famous wooden bridge and just all over the little town. We started to get reallllly cold though so we headed into an American diner to grab some food quick. It was a very interesting little diner that kinda started turning into a nightclub like place it was very odd. After this we headed back to our hostel or rather ran to the hostel since it was raining-snowing and freeeezing.

The next day we woke up and had a great free hostel breakfast. Then we headed down to the main part of town to walk along the river and the market that is there on Saturday mornings. The market was probably one of my favorite parts. The streets along the gorgeous river was full of cute little market stands full of flower shops, chocolate vendors, fish, meat, CHEESE. It was soooo cute. They had amazing samples to. It was so fun. I love watching native people shopping and i love the freshness of being able to buy things at markets. We found this stand with these ladies selling goods from women in India. It was a nonprofit organization and these women make these hand made goods everything was sooo pretty, we couldnt resist. We also found a really cute souvenir and art shop. I bought some wool and the next time I am on a long bus ride I plan to knit myself a scarf. I’m very excited. One of my favorite things about Switzerland was the number of bead and crafty stores. Everything is soooo pretty. The craft stores were everywhere with lots of beading and scarves and everything. it was really bad for me and my love of jewlery and crafts. We spent all day just walking around the river stopping to take a multitude of pictures. We stopped to wade into the freeeezing water, play in a park, climb a tree, watch parrots, and watch Swiss people and little children playing. It was so lovely and relaxing to just have no agenda, no specific museum or place to go and to just enjoy the company of mountains and lakes. We explored some more of the shops too. The shopping in Switzerland was amazing! We didn’t do much but it was fun to look. The most exciitng thing was when we went to a shoe store and I actually found a pair of shoes in my size…first time since being in Europe. It was great. The people were generally really tall in Switzerland so I guess it makes sense that they have huuuuuge shoes. Afterwards, we went to a cute little chocolate shop to buy a toooon of chocolate…I mean we were in Switzerland we had to buy chocolate then we we went to a cute cafe for some lunch. I had a delicious asparagas quiche that had the most delicious cheese. It was sooo good and cute. After lunch we decided to explore the other side of the river and so we took another 3 hour walk along it. It was exciting because the weather was clearing up and the sun started to peek out through the clouds and the clouds started to lift and we could actually see the top of the mountains. We knew there were mountains…we could see them, but we didnt realize how many of them there were and how beautiful the mountains were until the clouds lifted. It was breathtaking. By now it was getting colder and dark, so we headed back to our hostel to chilll a little before dinner. When we got back we found an older lady sleeping in our room, we were no longer alone and she was already sleeping at like 7pm…oh well I guess we’ll just have to relax quietly. After relaxing and getting ready we went out for a great dinner of fondue. I had never had fondue before, let alone Swiss fondue. The fondue was soooo great. We got delicious wheat bread, potatos and veggies and put them in the amazing fondue. I had a delicious cup of tea to accompany it also it was amazing and sooo fun to make and eat. The restaurant was so cute too. It was all woody and firey feeling and homey very long cabin like. It was cute. We stayed there forever (again) just loving the fondue. it was the best cheese ever!!

The next morning we woke up bright and early to take our train to Zurich. It was such a fun train ride we somehow ended up in the “baby” car of the train. Behind was a dad and his little baby. I just love watching dads with their kids they are soooo cute. the baby kept crying and the dad was just so sweet with his baby it was probably the cutest thing ever. In front of me was a young couple with a baby girl proabably about 10 months old. She was the cutest little baby and she had the greates smile ever. She kept looking at me and I would make faces at her and she would give me the biggest most adorable smile. Her parents kept and laughing at us, but she was the cutest thing ever. then next to us sat another adorable family. There was the grandma, mom, a girl about 5, another girl with the cutest blonde curly hair about 1 or 2 and a baby boy. They were soooo adorable. the toddler was absolutely adorable. It made the train ride so enjoyable I just love kids! Once we arrived in Zurich, we set out to do the usual tourist information stuff and discovered that Zurich is worse than Spain–nothing is open on Sundays Well, I guess we saved a lot of money, but it was sad nothing was open at all…a lot of restaurants were closed, even the tourist shops were closed. At least in Spain come Sunday the more touristy shops stay open and its a big tourist day. In Zurich the only things open were a few restaurants and the stores in the train station. It was very very odd. I had read in our travel book that Zurich had free bike rentals, so Amanda and I went to rent bikes for the day. It was so fun and such a great change of pace from walking the whole time. We rented our bikes and signed our lives away by giving them our passports and set out to explore Zurich. It was a little chilly, but it was nice and sunny out. We also picked a good day to go to Zurich because it was the annual Zurich marathon…so a lot of streets were closed. We decided to go and see the marathon first. it was so neat, we just stood and watched the runners for awhile…I give all of them so much credit for doing that. We continued down the street a little more because we had music and we soon discovered a large stage with music and dancing as entertainment during the marathon. It was the oddest entertainment I have ever seen. First of all it was right on the path of the running, which would seem distracting to me. Second of all the show was very odd, I felt like I was in a strip club or something to give you an idea of the kind of dancing it was. amanda and i were very confused by this. We continued on our bike exploration of zurich by biking along the river stoping very often to take pictures of the pretty lake and town. Since it was palm sunday, I really wanted to make it to mass, so we rode along the lake looking for the three famous cathedrals/churches in Zurich. the first church we went to was Grossmunster. It was really beautiful. It was a lot simpler than other churches we have been to, but it had a gorgeous stained glass altar which was highlighted by palms for palm sunday. We continued along the river and then went to Fraumünster. Fraumünster was beautiful…once again there was no mass to attend, but it was beautiful to explore. The famous stained glass windows by Mark Chagall were simply beautiful. The colors are amazing. Usually stained glass windows are such dark colors in churches, but these had the most beautiful pastel colors. They were bright oranges and turquoises and just breathtaking. They were very modern and pretty. I really liked the churches in Zurich I wish I could have gone to a mass there. After exploring the gorgeous churches and the river, we grabbed some lunch. We got some amazing sausages from a stand and sat in a cute little gazebo for a picnic lunch. It was very nice and relaxing…I love picnic lunches! We even had the entertainment of some Swiss skateboarders during lunch. They were actually amusingly annoying. But the sausages were soooo good. After this, we went down by the river to go on a river cruise. We bought our tickets and boarded our boat, realizing that once again in Switzerland it was not necessary to pay to get on. Everytime we bought bus tickets and now these boat tickets, they would never check to see if we had tickets, we could have done everything for free. But anyways, we chose a table on the top of the boat right on the side so that we would have a perfect view of the river and everything. It was gorgeous…sunny, perfect weather, and the sights were beautiful. Amanda and I spent most of the time picking out our future houses along the lake. We ended up bothing liking the same house so I think we’re going to have to fight over it in the future But they were sooo pretty, old style houses, perfect size, with nice boat garages, some had slides into the river and such. It was very very pretty. The boat cruise was sooo fun, we got to admire the amazing houses and see the river and the people on the river. there were these two cute little boys trying to raft on the river they were adorable. after the boat cruise, we biked around Zurich some before we returned the bikes. We then explored some of the lovely shopping that Hauptbahnhof (Zurich train station) offered. It surprisngly had a lot, but it was all very odd. We couldn’t believe that the only thing open in the entire city were the stores in the train station. We bought some more delicious chocolate from a chocolate shop and tried on shoes in a shoe store and looked at books and a book store. It wasn’t the best shopping, but I tried on shoes and they actually fit so it was a fun time. After shopping a bit, we set out to find some chocolate fondue. We had tried the cheese and we really wanted chocolate. We walked a long ways to this adorable fondue house… it was so cute, but…they didnt have chocolate fondue. The owner told us that Zurich doesnt really have chocolate fondue Oh well. So then we walked back into the city by the lake to find some food, we went to a cute Swiss restaurant and sat at a table with a Greek girl, Swiss man probably in his upper 20s, a beautiful German in his 20s also, and an older German man that had the weirdest and most annoying laugh. It was certainly interesting dinner company. But, we had a nice meal of potato pancakes, eggs, and dumplings with delicious cheese. After dinner, we went back down to the river to look at it at night. I love when cities are all light up and pretty at night! We ended our night at a piano club that we had found earlier…which ended up being one of the most amusing parts of Zurich. When we arrived it was just getting started. We sat down at a table and wanted to order a drink, but we discovered that the cheapest drink was about 10 swiss franks and the average price was 15. woah expensive. We decided to order some tea since it was only 4.50, we discovered later when we got the bill that we had ordered just after 9 and therefore our one cup of tea was 9.50. Most expensive cup of tea I’ve ever had. the music began, and we could tell this was going to be a funny night. The pianist was an American singing fairly well-known English songs and he was intoxicated and he kept asking for more to drink while he sang and played. In the corner next to us was an older man that looked like he was straight out of the mob waiting for his bussiness partner to come and deliver the cash or something. At the bar was another couple. After a few songs, some mroe people entered into the bar including a man dressed as…i still cant believe it…he was dressed in a hard core purple pirate outfit! He had this long purple coat and a ruffly shirt and just hard core original pirate look. It was the funniest thing ever. Then another young trendy couple came in and finally a German punk kid came into the bar that was apparently friends with the pianist. It was an odd group of people. Of course, we could not get over the pirate. We spent the next half an hour pretending to take pictures of Amanda but really just trying to get a good shot of the pirate…which we did. I think he figured us out though cause he winked at us when we left. We enjoyed some more music, and before we had to go we asked the pianist to play Tiny Dancer by Elton John. It was such a funny place and a great way to end Switzerland. At this time, we went back to the train station to get on our night train to Paris. The night train was sooo much fun. We opted to not spend an extra 30 bucks on a bed, which was actually a really good idea, because instead of a cheap cramped bunk bed, we had an entire compartment to ourselves. When we first walked in we both looked at each other and were like–we are in harry Potter. It was exactly like the compartments on the hogwarts express. With the benches on each side, luggage racks, sliding door. It was sooo neat! We were so excited, we couldnt contain ourselves. We started to get really hyper, and so when we tried to lift my heave handleless suitcase up onto the luggage racks it took us 10 minutes, and only after we dropped the suitcase and my head and cracked my neck did we calm down to lift the thing up. It was soo amusing. We then sprawled out on the bench and slept on the train. I slept really well, except for when people would come in and try to sit in our compartment…but we had taken over. the only other interruption was when somebody came to check our tickets for a second time. We had both been in a deep sleep and it was probably about 3 am by now, and she was like tickets! and we were so startled and disoriented we couldnt figure out where we were, where our tickets were, we were so confused and we started laughing. the lady was not happy, but it was funny. We fell back asleep, and soon we woke up in Paris. :0)

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