Zurich, Switzerland, Sept 28, 2013

Intro

Today we decided that since this is the second time that we've been close to the thriving metropolis of Zurich, we should do the touristy thing and go see it.

So we figured out how to get there and back by train, and hoofed it to the nearest station, a few blocks from the hotel. The train ride itself was 10 minutes long.

To provide you with a bit of context for the location, here is the Google Maps view of Switzerland, with Zurich highlighted. We spent the previous part of our vacation along the western edge of Switzerland.

Here is my mapping software's view of our stroll through downtown Zurich. We walked a little over 5 kms. That is the train station in the upper left-hand corner of this shot. We saw that there were tracks numbered up to 54 - not sure if that means that there are 54 tracks in total, or that the numbers just go there. But there were a lot of tracks, on multiple levels. Swiss engineering again!

The photos

It was a cloudy day today, a bit cool but not uncomfortable.

Here are a few photos of the city - not too much different from any other old European city.

First, a bunch of buildings that I know nothing about, other than that they caught my eye.

This was neat because those tables were truly slanted!

This building is in the water, with little tunnels. One is curious, of course!

The opera house, behind the brown building.

A steep and narrow alley, complete with a restaurant with outdoor tables near the bottom.

We got to the lake, and decided to stroll along a huge pedestrian walkway on the eastern shore of the lake.

We saw boats on the lake.

While we were wandering the streets, we came across a band (winds and a drum) playing in front of the crowds of shoppers. I captured a small segment of their music in a video.

The words on the tuba are Musikverein Harmonie Zurich-Oberstrass

Fauna

We saw lots of swans.

And ducks that looks like mallards.

Oddities

We will be missing this musical. Oh, well....

Shopping

Switzerland is known for its watchmakers. And its prices. Shortly after we choked on the price of one watch at about $30,000, we saw another for about $150,000.

Some time later, we went into a Swatch store, where I bought a really nice watch for about $150. That's about 10 times the amount that I usually spend on watches! Or .1% of the price of that 6-digit watch!

And we found a souvenir store where we added to our Tshirt collections.