Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Why Zurich? Our cruise ship certainly wasn’t going to depart from there! Well, when we were discussing what we wanted to do in addition to the cruise (when you’ve travelled halfway round the world, you want to see and do as much as you can!), two of the bucket list things my sister mentioned were taking the Glacier Express train from St Mouritz to Zermatt (or vice versa), and spending some time at Lake Como. That got us talking about where else to go, what else to do, how we were going to get there, etc., so one of our earliest decisions was to buy a Eurail Pass each and use trains to get around Switzerland and Italy, the two main places we decided to spend some time. I discovered that the very expensive fare on the Glacier Express is covered by the Eurail Pass (plus a small seat reservation fee), so that was one of our first decisions, and why we took a flight that landed us in Zurich.

But of course, we had a full day in Zurich before we ventured onto the Glacier Express part of the trip, so what to do, what to see? Zurich is the home of Lindt chocolates, so that got added to the list and after we’d booked our airfares, our next purchases were the Eurail Pass and tickets to the Lindt Chocolate Museum.

We took the train from Zurich Airport into the main station (about 15 minutes and only a few Euros [EU]); trains go about every 15 minutes and it’s WAY cheaper than getting a taxi (about EU100). We’d deliberately booked a hotel close to the train station, the weather was fine, and we needed a walk after 30+ hours either flying or in airports, so we hoofed ourselves and our luggage to the hotel, which was across a bridge, over several tram tracks, and across main roads. And at the hotel we encountered the biggest thing about Europe that a lot of people won’t tell you—there are stairs EVERYWHERE! We took our luggage inside, only to be confronted with a set of steps to the reception area. Fortunately, someone noticed us and our luggage and told us to go back outside, up the hill at the side of the hotel (thank goodness for wheels on luggage!) and then come in the back entrance, where there were only about 3 steps. Phew! There was also a small elevator inside the hotel to take us to our floor. Even though it was early morning and we were going to just leave our luggage and head out until our room was ready, they said our room was ready now, so we dumped our stuff in the tiny (and very expensive for its size!) room, and headed out into the early morning sunshine. The weather was just perfect. Sunshine, not at all cold, and the city was just starting to wake up.

We wandered across bridges, walked down to Lake Zurich, into the old town, and stopped to have breakfast at a cafe overlooking the river. And there we encountered the next thing about Switzerland in particular—it is VERY expensive. I don’t drink coffee, but my sister does. Her cappuccino cost around EU7 (about AU$14—a similar thing in a cafe in Australia is about AU$5), and with the small pastry she had for breakfast, we were suddenly looking at a bill that was about EU20 (AU$40) for a single coffee and a small slice of apple tart! She said it wasn’t even very good coffee!

THIN slice of apple tart

But the main thing on our agenda for Zurich was Lindt. Back to Lake Zurich to see what time the ferry left, only to be told there wouldn’t be another for a while (it was a public holiday in Switzerland). The person at the terminal suggested we catch a bus from across the street, so we did. It dropped us right at Lindt and in we went. Our first reaction? Wow!!! In the middle of the main area is a 2-storey chocolate fountain!!! No, you can’t sample it, but you can certainly see it. We were a little early for our scheduled entry time for the museum, so we wandered about in the store. More wow! Every conceivable choc flavour was available for purchase. We held off until after we’d been to the museum.

Chocolate fountain at the entrance to Lindt

Lindt store

Lindt store

The museum itself was OK, but unless a museum is really different, one is very much like another. So we got through that part fairly quickly hoping there’d be a sampling section… and there was! In fact, there were THREE sampling sections.

In the first, you stuck a plastic spoon under a large tube containing molten chocolate, pressed a little pump and got a dollop of deliciousness on your spoon. After watching some others, I realised you could put your spoon under and press the pump 3 or 4 times to basically fill your spoon with yumminess. They had milk, caramel, and white chocolate tubes, and my favourite was the caramel. It was SO yummy that I forgot to take any photos of this area!! Who knew that warm runny chocolate could be so good???

The second sampling area had more tubes, but this time there were about 16 or so of them, each with bars of different Lindt chocolates in them. There were no labels so you couldn’t tell what was in each until you sampled it. At the base of each tube they had a light ring—it glowed green when you could put your hand under, and red when you couldn’t. When you put you hand under, a piece or two of the chocolate bar would be chopped off and drop into your hand, ready for you to sample. Also yummy.

Tubes of chocolate bars

And the third sampling area had ‘buckets’ of wrapped balls of Lindt chocolates—you could put your hand in and grab what you wanted. But to be honest, by this stage we were almost chocolated out! We did take several for eating later, perhaps in a week or so (I brought mine home, so it was over a month before I ate them).

After all that chocolate, we decided not to go back into the Lindt store. Instead, we ordered the hot chocolate drink in their cafe, which was very nice but probably wasn’t the best thing to have on a hot day (it was 28 C in Zurich that day, which is hot for them).

Hot chocolate at Lindt

A walk was in order too, so we wandered along the edge of Lake Zurich to the ferry terminal and caught the ferry back to the edge of the main city centre, then walked a heap more to try and wear off some of the chocolate overload we’d experienced. The ticket we’d purchased on the bus also covered the ferry, so that was a nice surprise. Zurich has a very efficient and clean public transport network of trains, buses, trams, and ferries, and it was a great (and cheap) way to get around. If we’d been staying there longer, we’d have bought a travel pass for a couple of days.

By the time we got back to town, there were a lot of people around (there’d been almost no-one earlier on—the shops etc. don’t normally open until 10am, and because it was a public holiday, not many were open at all, but the bars and restaurants were certainly coming into their own on our return). We walked some more, then decided to share a late lunch/early dinner of bratwurst, with rich onion gravy and rosti (potato dish). Very yummy! We have an early start tomorrow and figured we should probably get some sleep!

Bratwurst, onion gravy and rosti