Zurich, Day 2 - 15th February 2016

I woke up today and everything hurt. Standing for a few hours on end to watch a parade, wearing a 5kg backpack is a little exhausting, I guess.

So we decided to have an easy day today. It's Monday, so that meant that a lot of things were still closed, including the Zurich museum, which we wanted to see.

We had another rough night from jet lag last night, although we managed to force ourselves to lie in bed until about 5am before we turned the TV on.

At around 8am we got ready to leave our hotel, walking to the number 2 tram stop that was just outside our hotel. The number 2 took a little longer than the streetcar 31 to reach the centre of Zurich, and went further down the Bahnhoffstrasse instead of stopping right near Central.

Hugh Near the Bahnhoffstrasse

Zurich Old Town

We walked from the Bahnhoffstrasse into old town Zurich for breakfast. As I mentioned before, a lot is still closed in Zurich on Monday, despite being a business day. Finding a nice cafe for breakfast was a bit hard and I was hitting 'major grouchy' with my pre-breakfast mood. We trudged into some back streets of old town, where we found an unassuming shopfront with signage indicating it was a tea room. We expected that it would be fairly ordinary on the inside, but after we entered Peclard and found a small flight of stairs, a beautiful room of cushy red chairs opened up before us. The lighting was soft, the temperatures were warm and it was exactly what I imagined the gryffindor common room would be like. The food was pretty good to, so that was a bonus.

Zurich Old Town, covered in confetti

After refuelling at Peclard and somehow dragging myself from the squashy, comfortable chairs, Hugh and I explored Old Town some more. All through old town was evidence of the parade from yesterday. Colourful litter (read: confetti) filled every crack between cobblestones, and floated in fountains. We wondered how long the cleanup would take or how anyone would ever hope to clean it up. A few minutes later our question was answered, as we saw a small vehicle with massive sweepers running across the walkway. It somehow managed to make the streets look tidier, but I think it was nearly impossible to remove it all. I was still finding confetti reminders of the Carneval in my daypack 3 weeks later.

Sausage & Roschti

We headed back towards Zurich HB for lunch, stopping in to the Federal for some traditional Swiss Roschti. Roschti is a grated potato dish with flavouring and for being so simple, is quite delicious. We shared a plate with a German sausage. We'd previously decided that we were going to be a bit foodie on this holiday, so we followed up our roschti with some hot chocolate from the Sprungli Cafe. We also stopped into the Laderach chocolate shop later in the day. Its weird to note that hot chocolates in Switzerland are expensive, at around $10AUD for one, but we could buy 6 or so craft chocolates like truffles for around $3 AUD, which is considerably cheaper than Australia.

Laderach Chocolate Taps!

Going up the Rigiblick

In the afternoon we caught a tram just up past the university area, to the Seilbahn Rigiblick funicular railway. We rode the Funicular cart up to the top of the track on the Zurichberg Hill. The Seilbahn Rigiblick was included in our transport day pass and was a steep 5 minute journey from top to bottom that gave stunning views of the city as we ascended. It ran constantly up and down the hill.

The nearby Polybahn Rigiblick, which was much shorter and went to the hospital area

We got off up the top at the Rigiblick station and headed towards the entrance to a forest on top of the hill.

There is no possible way for me to describe the beauty of the forest. All I could think of was how enchanted I was that the trees and woods that they describe in fantasy books were real. The leaves on the trees and ground were striking shades of oranges and yellows, that contrasted strongly against the dim light of the overcast day. Zurich itself is a very gray city, and it was easy to forget that colour still existed in the world as we walked around that day. As we walked further into the forest small flurries of snow started to swirl about us. It was still very light and melted almost as soon as it alighted on the branches and dirt of the forest.

In the forest

After a small walk through the quiet trees, without seeing another soul, we headed back down the funicular railway, had an easy dinner near central, and headed back to our hotel to prepare for an early morning train the next day.