24 hrs in Zurich, Switzerland 🇨🇭

From the plane to the train downtown, Zürich is more temperate than Athens. The train station is as opulent as the airport. We hop off downtown and walk a few blocks to Furdich Guest House & Kafi. The cafe is cozy and eclectic, chill folky music is playing. We leave our baggage in the office and set out to spend the couple hours before checking in.

🥨🧀🥖

I love going to grocery stores in other countries. They’re usually pretty cool (AC) and it’s fun to see the local snacks and differences in all the sections of the store. At Migros we bought baked pretzels, a loaf of soft sliced bread, a tube of mustard (genius), a little pack of salami and a cheese platter! We also got plums, yellow watermelon, hazelnut yogurt, and the cheapest Swiss chocolate bar, just to test it as a base line for our Lindt factory tour later that afternoon. 🍬

The park is big, green, and blessed with lots of enormous trees. There are couples, and people on their lunch breaks, families with kids and it looks idyllic. We sit in the grass about 6m from a tree and a black and white dog strolls by. We miss our dog so we’re watching him with tenderness. 🐶 He decides to “use the WC” halfway between us and the tree, which puts a damper on the picnic, but luckily his owner comes by to scoop. 🌳

No worries. The picnic is phenomenal. There are no sketchy ingredients allowed in this Swiss délice! We ppl watch a little more and notice that around the perimeter of the park, on benches, some characters are a little erratic, getting loud now and then. Not great vibes. A very sexy lady walks by very slowly. An older fellow follows her. Hmmm. Time for us to take a hike. 🗺️

We walk out to explore the neighborhood. We pass shops and cafes. There are a few people out and about. The architecture has story book details like curving iron balconies, and dormered roofs, in beiges and ochres. But the color palate shifts to black and red. Prints on the businesses look like 80s albums with cartoon lips and sultry eyes. The people outside seem to be wearing a lot of makeup on such a hot day. Ohhhhh… this is a district… 🛑

We head back to the neighborhood where we saw the funky record store, back to the more wholesome vibes. Our room at the Guesthouse is ready. We settle in, change and Uber to the Lindt factory! We get an interactive history-of-chocolate tour which culminates with a cloying amount of samples. In a word, decadent. Chocolate fountain, chocolate bark, chocolate bar dispenser, and the classic shiny spheres of all flavours. Now we’ve got about $40 worth of chocolate on us to keep from melting. Silly. 🍫

We walk to the waterfront and the locals are swimming and stand up paddle boarding. Some picnickers are even sipping champagne and a big fella does a backflip. Mike can’t resist a refreshing plunge in the stunning scene. 🏊‍♂️

We Uber back to relax. We have snacks on the balcony and listen to a live band playing in the park. It’s across the road. Mike and I check it out for a half hour. It’s a cool little band called Bandit Voyage. They rock out in French, German & English. The guitar player is in roller skates the whole time. 🛼🎸

And that’s that. We leave Zurich 24 hrs later by train. Off to Lindau via Bregenz. 🚞