Est. September 2016
Happy New Year to all! We wish you the very best for 2018!
Ian finally got his act together and all of our pictures from our time together in Europe are now on the website. Head on over to the Europe 2017 gallery and check out the pictures from our anniversary trip to Florence and our weekend in Vienna!
This post is out of order and about a month late, but I guess that is how life is sometimes 🙂
We decided to spend our first anniversary in Florence. I had been there in 2014 and loved it, and I really wanted to share that with Christine. We arrived on Friday evening and took the bus from the airport to the main train station. From there it was a reasonable enough walk to the apartment that we had rented for the weekend. Our apartment was right near the river and in a rather old building. How old? I don’t know, OLD. But really awesome. We couldn’t figure out how to get the code on the elevator to work, so we walked up to the top story. The staircase was built into the walls of the central atrium, and was somewhat terrifying. At that point, we resolved to make the elevator work, because…yikes
Our trip to Florence was about food, architecture, art, and churches (yes churches are technically covered by architecture and art). The Bascilica of Santa Croce was right near our apartment and, while smaller than the main Cathedral, is never the less quite spectacular. Floods throughout the course of time have left their mark on the church and the tombs of some of the famous people buried there (Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli for instance). The wooden ceilings are extremely ornate and there is even a leather working academy on the church grounds. It was really cool to see the apprentice leather workers learning the craft from the masters.
The Duomo, or main Cathedral compound in the center of the city is pretty stupendous. The cathedral itself sits on the ruins of a much smaller church who’s mosaic floors date back to Roman times. The “new” cathedral is much larger, and special machines (cranes) were invented by the architect (Brunelleschi) for its construction. As huge as this cathedral is, you could still fit roughly five of them inside St. Peter’s! By comparison to other churches, the inside is relatively understated, aside from the depiction of the Last Judgement on the inside of the copula – that is pretty impressive! The bell tower stands almost 300 feet tall and you can climb to the top. It was pretty windy when we were up there, so it was a little exciting, especially for someone who has no love of heights. The final building is the Baptistery of St. John. This is an interesting remnant from a time that you could not enter a Catholic church unless you were baptized. The ceiling of the octagonal chapel is covered in gold mosaics depicting the lives of Jesus and St. John. The whole building glows – it’s really pretty. The doors of the Baptistery are also famous for their elaborate sculptures depicting scenes from the Old and New Testament.
Our final artsy stop was the Gallery of the Academy of Florence, home of Michelangelo’s David. There are many works of art in the Gallery, for it is a huge space, but for me, the musical instruments are the most intriguing. They have a collection of Amanti and Stradivari cellos, violins, and violas that are so beautiful. Sadly playing them is completely out of the question. Of course, I think that Michelangelo was the most brilliant sculptor to have ever created – I could honestly sit and look at the Pieta for hours… That said, the David is impressive, from the incredible detail of the veins in his throwing arm to the fact that his proportions are such that he would seem to scale when placed on top of a cathedral (where he was originally intended to be). I have to say though, that I may be a little jealous, because all the squats in the world (or at least the ones that I am willing to do) will never give me a butt like that. All kidding aside, it is a great museum!
Food! Pizza, gelato, pastries, pasta, meat, coffee, wine! We were there at the end of the summer, but the pesto gnocchi at the Osteria dei Pazzi, were really great – so much basil and garlic! We had gelato at a little store (La Strega Nicciola), where the proprietor was sure to know that he had the 2nd best gelato shop in Florence, I think that he was being modest. We had a melted cheese and truffle appetizer at Trattoria Diladdarno that was to die for! And to be honest, you pretty much can’t go wrong with the wine – you are in Tuscany after all! My favorite food experience was on Sunday when we stashed our bags at a baggage storage center (make sure you research these a bit first, we did, but we read some great stories of extortion from other vendors) and headed for the Mercato Centrale. The whole upper story is dedicated to food. There is a cooking school that we have on our list for the next trip. They sell these fried cones of rice and vegetables that are really good. For lunch/dinner we sat and the wine bar and let them make suggestions for us while we ate our fill of crostinis and cheese. I just wanted a few more pieces of Parmesan, and they gave us about a half-kilo, it was awesome.
Two days in Florence is not enough to remotely do it justice, but it was a great return for me and introduction for Christine. We will return!
Sorry for the delay in updates for this last weekend (and yes, we still haven’t gotten the Florence pictures up). Christine has been traveling, and I was getting ready to make the trip back to Portland.
Last weekend, we met up with Mom and Dad in Vienna. This was their last stop before heading back to New Mexico, and my last weekend in Europe. Vienna is pretty beautiful. The Hapsburgs really spared no expense in making it the capital of the world at the time. Now, granted, many of the buildings were originally built for their own use, but today they are open to the grimy masses, which was good news for us!
Mom, Dad, and I spent Friday walking around the city and ended up at the Imperial Treasury after lunch. They have an incredible collection of treasure amassed by the Hapsburgs during their reign. One of the most impressive pieces was a container carved from a 3,800 caret emerald. This thing was HUGE! After the museum, we hurried out to the Airport to meet Christine when she arrived from Berlin. The four of us headed back to the apartment and then did some more sightseeing before realizing that it was time to eat again and most restaurants were already full for the night… oops… We ended up at a nice Italian place, where they took pity on us and found a table. The food was great!
Saturday, we got an impressively early start for the Franks and made our way out to the Schonbrun Palace – the Hapsburg summer residence. This complex is amazing! I don’t know if I have ever seen a palace on this scale, clearly money was of no concern for these people. We walked through the grounds to the Zoo, which is the oldest in the world (this is their claim, I have not verified it). I was really impressed by how extensive the Zoo was. The exhibits were really nice and they had everything from horses and cows to Pandas and Koalas. We over-stayed at the zoo, so we sprinted back to the subway station and made it to the restaurant just in time to make our reservation. Christine and I shared a traditional Viennese dish of a pork chop in what I can only describe as a crispy, sourdough empanada. It was quite tasty and perhaps something that we will need to try to emulate at home (when we have an oven again). I miss having a full kitchen…
Sunday morning, Mom and Dad had an early flight, so we bid them farewell and then promptly went back to sleep for a few hours. After waking up the second time and getting fed, we headed off to the Haus des Meeres, which is an Aquarium with a bit of a zoo flare as well (monkeys and birds in one of the habitats). The aquarium is built in one of 6 flack towers that were constructed around Vienna to protect it from the Allies in World War Two. The aquarium is as impressive as the Zoo, and kept us occupied for several hours. After lunch, we headed to the Natural History Museum. We only had an hour and a half so we were barely able to scratch the surface of this enormous collection, originally a private collection of the Hapsburgs, of course. The minerals and gems, meteorites, and Dinosaurs were pretty excellent! From there it was a quick trip back to the airport, and back to Zurich. Good weekend!
Mom, Dad, and Max arrived in ZĂĽrich on Labor Day and we spent part of the day exploring the old part of the city. Without fail, we headed for some of the local Churches. In the words of Max, “Well, that didn’t take long.” When in Europe with our parents (specifically the male one), there are a lot of church visits, and understandably so. Churches are the custodians of huge amounts of history and some pretty impressive art. So, we visited the GrossmĂĽnster and then the FraumĂĽnster. The later of which had some very impressive Chagall stained class windows.
Mom, Dad, and Max headed out to Grindelwald on Tuesday and had a spectacular time (no surprise). They got further up First than we did (though they did take the tram to the top), and they went all the way up to the Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in Europe and the home of some truely spectacular views. If I can get them to share some pictures of their trip, I will post them.
The family returned to ZĂĽrich on Friday evening, so we celebrated out reunion with a great meal at a French restaurant in the old city. We all agreed that it was one of the best meals that we could remember having! Saturday we got a typically Frank start and took one of the ferries down the lake to Rapperswil. I had been there on my own a few weeks before, but it was great to share it with everyone. The weather was a bit damp the second time around, but I think that we all enjoyed it. The Swiss build some pretty impressive playgrounds and slides. Dad proved that he was indeed the youngest at heart of all of us and rode the slide down the hill. It turns out that the people we had watched go down before must have had a significantly higher coefficient of friction than Dad, because he got more than he bargained for and was expelled from the exit of the slide with quite a bit of leftover momentum, which was then promptly absorbed by the ground and is left buttock. Fortunately, his bones are as strong as his spirit 🙂 It was nothing that a good dinner of Fondue and Raclette couldn’t fix.
Max headed back to the States on Sunday morning, and the rest of us headed for the ZĂĽrich Art Museum. Those of you who know Christine and I, know that this is perhaps not our favorite activity, but we were pretty impressed with the collection, and I personally found some works that I would, in fact, like to have in my home… don’t worry, I am not thinking of becoming an art thief. After a quick lunch at the museum we walked down the eastern shore of Lake ZĂĽrich to a large park with a very interesting mechanical sculpture that has a few “performances” a day. We were able to catch the last one before heading to dinner. It was pretty cool! Dinner was amazing Italian food with homemade pasta cooked just right. Are you seeing a trend here? We Franks love good food 🙂
Mom and Dad headed to Austria this morning, but we look forward to seeing them in Vienna next weekend!
Seriously, Just WOW!
Last weekend we headed for the village of Grindelwald in the Jungfrau Region of the Alps. The train ride was a little more interesting than the ones that we have had in the past as it required two connections, but hey, it’s Switzerland, and things are almost always on time so even a 6 minute connection is doable. Upon our arrival at the station, we were taken to our guest hours by the mother of one of the owner’s of the house. She was about 85 and the drive was reminiscent of the scenes of Peter Sellers driving the delivery cars down the hill (without the crashing into the pool part). But, she got us there safely and it turns out she makes a mean Linzer Torte – so good!
I am going to keep the rest of my narrative pretty short, because the pictures can tell you so much more than I can. Saturday was rainy with total cloud cover above 1,500m. We did a hike up the east side of the valley to the middle tram station on the Firstbahn, and took the gondola down after some much needed coffee and time by the fire. We walked around the town a bit (I needed a winter hat because I was downright cold), and then headed out to the bird rescue. They had several different breeds of owls, some ravens, and another bird that we have yet to identify. The owls and ravens were fed a pretty generous supply of chicks. It was a little odd, yet fascinating to watch them eat (fortunately it had been a while since we had our tasty fondue lunch). Even in the cold and cloudy weather, the valley was incredibly beautiful! We had dinner at the guesthouse/restaurant and it was delicious!
Sunday the weather was clear, so after being dropped off at the train station and putting our big bag in a locker, we headed off on the hiking trails up along the Eiger Wall to Eigergletscher and then down to Kleine Scheidigg. The hike was absolutely amazing! When we got to Kleine Scheidigg we had a late lunch and some well deserved beers. We took the train back to Grindelwald station and from there caught our connections back to Zurich. We will have to make it back to Grindelwald some day soon. It was just so cool! The skiing here looks like it should also be amazing, so I think that will have to be added to the list of things to do.
Warning, this post contains content that some may consider whining.
Having not gotten comfortable in our apartment in BĂĽlach, after thirty days there, it was time to move into a new place. Friday morning, we packed up our things (pretty quick work) and packed them into the Biotronik company car for the quick trip to Kloten, about halfway between BĂĽlach and ZĂĽrich. The new place is smaller than the old one, CONSIDERABLY. Christine went to work and I stayed at the apartment to unpack and get some work done.
Unpacking actually took considerably more time, as it required my long forgotten Tetris skills to get everything a home. Satisfied with my organizing, I started some work while listening to music. After some time, the music mysteriously stopped. The computer was still on, so what had happened? Another clue should have been that I hadn’t received a response to a text I sent Christine in an abnormally long time. It turns out that the WiFi is somewhat patchy in the apartment, and goes out, reliably every 25-45 minutes, just long enough to make all of my devices burp. Oh well, First World problems. On the upside, we now have a washer, AND a drier, and they both work just fine! Also, there is an honest to goodness, Cold War era bomb shelter in the basement near the laundry room. It is currently used for storage lockers.
By the time Christine got home I had found an Ethernet cable, so at least the laptop had a reliable connection (when you were careful not to apply any force to the cable, since both tabs had been broken off). We had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant in town and bought some food and other small items that the new place was missing. Then came the night.
It turns out that the apartment came equipped, for no added cost, with das Bett zum Tuefel, we got hardly any sleep and by morning, we were both unsure of how we were going to make this place work for another 1-2 months. Enter the hardest hitting bout of homesickness yet. Not yet to the level of Hummingbird Music Camp (ask my dad about the first time they dropped me off there, I bet he might share), but it was getting there. We needed a plan STAT.
Like the good Americans that we are, we decided that some retail therapy might help. Where better to go to make a tiny apartment feel like home than IKEA?! IKEA here is pretty much like back home. Only they don’t have all of the surface area available, so it is about 5 stories tall. We got lunch (the restaurant was sort of hidden, so that was an adventure in and of itself), and then bought some things. By the time we got them back to the apartment and together, the place was a lot more promising. We also took apart Diablo’s bed and just put the mattress on the floor. Saturday, after some great Italian food and wine, we slept like happy little babies!
Sunday, it was time for a little adventure. After breakfast at our local bakery, we took the bus back to BĂĽlach and then got on the train to Schaffhausen. Just before you get to Schaffhausen, you come out of a tunnel and are rewarded with an excellent view of the Rheinfall (or Rhine Falls in English) – the waterfalls are spectacular! Upon our arrival in Schaffhausen, we headed for the fortress on the top of the hill. It was simple but really quite impressive. We had lunch on top of the fortress, hiding from the sudden rainstorm that let us there.
After lunch, we walked along the river, down to the Rheinfall. There is an old castle that overlooks the falls. For a nominal fee, you can take the trail done to the falls and get to see them up close. It was a pretty awesome experience! We got lost on the way back up (most people take the 30 minute boat ride out, but we opted to walk), but eventually found our way across the pedestrian and heavy rail bridge to the train station and back to the apartment.
We ended the weekend on a much higher note than we began. The apartment is still a bit of a pain, but it will work out for us. I am sure that we will continue to utter little curses in reference to it, especially when I get all days’ iMessages in one big burp at the end of the day. We have yet to have the stereotypical couple’s fight in IKEA, so we have that achievement under our belts as well. Ultimately, life is pretty awesome!
In this installment of “Our Adventures,” we go to Geneva.
As it was the last weekend before school started again here in Switzerland (they only take 5 weeks of summer vacation, but spread the rest out over other parts of the year), we found that the train between ZĂĽrich and Geneva was a bit more crowded than usual. But we made it!
Saturday Morning, we took the tram out to CERN and took their two hour tour. It was really cool! We got to see the first particle accelerator that they ran from 1957 until 1990, the Synchrocyclotron. They have a very cool digital “demonstration” of the accelerator that they project onto the actual machine. They can’t run it because that would release a bunch of radiation into the room (don’t worry, we don’t glow now). We then got to see the control facility for the ATLAS detector, which was used to identify the Higgs Boson, and is a part of the Large Hadron Collider some 100m below the surface and 27km in diameter!
For lunch we headed to a brasserie for some amazingly delicious braised lamb and vegetables. The dishes certainly had some Moroccan flair and were absolutely perfect! While we enjoyed our lunch, some birds at the next table enjoyed a leftover cookie – they were pretty cute. Oh, yes. For appetizers, Christine decided that we should have some escargot. Apparently my reaction to them was priceless.
We spent the afternoon walking up the West side of Lake Léman. Geneva is really pretty and the lake front is no exception. We walked out to the quay just past on of the big beach parks. They have a “wake center” there, so we were able to watch some wake boarding, which was pretty cool. They have a tow line set up above the water with jumps and such between the two ends. It was kind of like a snowboard or skate park, but in the water. After watching a fair number of impressive wipe outs, we headed back to old town Geneva (up the hill), for a dinner of some really fantastic Italian style pizza. Super tasty!
Sunday we awoke and had no idea of what we would be doing. Being Sunday, many of the museums are closed, so we were left with a little bit of a thinking exercise. At breakfast, we ended up talking to a Welsh family, who suggested that we should rent a car and head south to check out Annecy, France. This sounded like a great adventure, so we went in search of a car rental, which also turned out to be an adventure in and of itself. So, remember how the museums were closed on Sunday? Yeah, so are most of the car rental agencies. Oops! We finally found an open one and the least expensive car they had was roughly a car payment, so we decided to find a new adventure.
Enter Genèveroule, a bike store that will let you have a bike for four hours and you just have to leave them a fully refundable deposit. How cool is that!? So, we took our two newly acquired rides out on the town. I quickly found out that mine was, in fact, the “old man” of the biking world – ornery and falling apart in some ways. The first sign was when I went to ring the bell and the top fell off and onto the street. Well, this was quickly remedied, and I kept a close eye on it in case it tried to escape again – it didn’t. The bell decided to leave the trickery to the bike’s drive train, which would randomly slip on hills. Good thing there were no hills… oh wait…
We biked about 3 miles up the east side of the lake before inadvertently following a jug handle that sent us back to the city. We opted for heading up the west side of the lake, and found it to be a much more enjoyable experience. There was less traffic and soon we were headed up a hill into the surrounding farmland and towards France. The fields that we passed on the way to the French border were beautiful and we got the sense of accomplishment of making it to another country – though as Mo informed us, yes, France is pretty close. When all was said and done, we had gone about 23 miles in our allotted time on the bikes. Not too shabby for city bikes 🙂
After we returned the bikes, we had a few hours before our train left and so we walked around, doing some window shopping (this is a big thing in Geneva). Geneva is the home of most of the big names in timepieces, so, as you might imagine, we saw some really nice watches. I resisted the urge to give one a new home, and we eventually found ourselves at a terrace café, enjoying some fondue. A wonderful was to end a great weekend!
So, it is almost time to head out for this weekend’s adventure, and I am just now getting to the pictures of last weekend’s. I guess it can’t all be fun and games – it isn’t vacation after all.
Last Friday evening we took the train to Lucerne (or Luzern if you are German speaking). After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we walked around the city, and it was absolutely beautiful. The city of Lucerne is at the top of Lake Lucerne and you can actually look across this stretch of the lake at the city on the other side. Anyway, the point is, it is really quite beautiful when it is all lit up and you can see the reflections in the water. To the south you get the hint of mountains in the darkness and perhaps some smaller towns on the south shore.
Saturday morning we woke up and started walking towards a place that, according to the internet, we could both eat a good meal for under 12 CHF. This sounded about as feasible as seeing Santa Claus, riding a unicorn, following a flying pig (in case it is not evident, Switzerland is EXPENSIVE), so we had to check it out. Low and behold, it was true! We continued to walk down the eastern shore of Lake Lucerne until we got to the Verkershaus (The Swiss Museum of Transport). On display outside of the museum, they had one of the cutting heads from the tunnel boring machines that dug the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps (it is 57km/35.5mi and currently the longest of its kind). We didn’t get to taking any pictures inside the museum, but for two engineers it was pretty much AMAZING. I think that this is how some people feel about being in an art museum. Don’t get me wrong, I love art and am glad that it is part of the world, but I don’t fully appreciate it the way that I appreciate feats of engineering, and the story of Swiss transportation (specifically rail travel) is incredible to me. With the museum having occupied most of our day and the promise of a great hike the next day, we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying a beer and some Swiss food at a restaurant on the river, walking around a bit more, and finally eating Doner Kebabs on the lake shore, fending off the hungry ducks. Seriously, apparently Doner Kebabs sound tasty to a mallard.
Sunday was, in a word, epic. We took the local train from Lucerne to Alpnachstad where the trail head for Pilatus is. The mountains and the water and the nearly perfectly clear morning we just stunning. The mountains of Western Colorado and Wyoming elicit a similar feeling of awe, but this was uniquely Swiss, because, where else would you have a cog railway leading to the top of the mountain? After watching the first of the trains head up the mountain, we found the trail and started the trek up. The clouds started to roll in (not rain clouds like the day before) and the peeks around us would appear and disappear from view. The first half of the hike was largely in a forest. We had a debate as to whether forests all pretty much feel the same or if they are unique and didn’t reach a conclusion, though I still hold to my, perhaps very unpopular, view that they feel largely the same no matter where you are, assuming similar foliage. Yes a predominantly evergreen forest will be different from a predominantly deciduous one. But anyway… where was I? We left the forest and found that we had crossed over the rail tracks without knowing it (tunnels). At this point we were pretty near the middle station where we thought we could get some water to refill our bottles. Fat chance! Good thing we hadn’t finished it, we could make it to the top!
The second half of the hike was comprised of mainly alpine meadows and steep rock faces. We figure that there must be some pretty amazing rock climbing to be had up there – something to consider in the future. The alpine meadows are also the grazing grounds for dairy cattle, which we heard long before we saw them. In Switzerland, all of the cows (that we have seen so far), wear large bells. The bells are mostly hand made, and each one is a little different. They ring as the cows move (which they do a lot of in their quest to feed themselves), and the result is a fantastic music that carries through the fog and clouds. It was pretty cool!
When we arrived at the top, completing our four hour journey, we were greeted by the sounds of a brass band and then later by Alpenhorns. The view was spectacular, and interesting, because you had to catch glimpses of it through holes in the clouds. We turned our interests towards eating and then finding some water. Well…it turns out that when you own a hotel/restaurant/store on top of a mountain, you can get away with not having drinking fountains and charging 9.50 a bottle for water – lesson learned. $20 lighter, we started walking around to the peaks of the mountains that the hotel is nestled between. Again, it was totally worth all of it, it is just so pretty.
Our trip back down the mountain took 40 minutes on the cog railway. The steepest part of the track is a 48% grade, but the cars are built so that you stay upright throughout the trip. The original builder and owner of the railway, Eduard Locher, actually designed a new cog system just for this application, because the slope was too steep for previous designs. They would have fallen out and the cars would have toppled down the mountain. The central track is essentially a rack that two gears on the car grip. These rails are the original ones and have been there for over 100 years. On their centennial, they decided that the rack was getting a little worn, so they flipped it over to the unworn side, and figure they can get another 100 years of use out of them. Wow! The views on the way down were as stunning as the ones on the way up. At the bottom we headed for the “flat” train system and back to Lucerne for some more walking, gelato, and dinner before heading back to Zürich. All in all, an amazing weekend!
I have finally sorted through the pictures from our first three trips to ZĂĽrich and put them up in a gallery! Hope you enjoy!
News and pictures from our trip to Luzern (Lucerne) are on their way.
So, I would say that we just got to Switzerland, but that would be a lie. We have now been here for thirteen days, and have just been having too much fun to put together a coherent post (though, after reading this, you may say that we still haven’t). This post will likely be longer than most, since a lot has happened in the last thirteen days.
For those who don’t know, we are currently in the ZĂĽrich Canton of Switzerland while Christine is on an exchange through her work. I will be here for about nine weeks and Christine will come home about a month later. For at least the first four weeks we are living in a town called BĂĽlach about 30 minutes north of ZĂĽrich by train.
Not to be undone by jet lag, we spent much of our first day familiarizing ourselves with our surroundings, walking around the town of BĂĽlach. This started with me trying to get a SIM card for my phone and realizing two things. One, my understanding of German at full speed is roughly 0.1%. Two, that they don’t really speak German here – they speak SchwiizertĂĽĂĽtsch – and even the Germans can’t understand them. There is a theory that it is the Swiss way of getting back at the Germans, I have to agree. After a rather difficult conversation about rate plans, I decided to go the free WiFi route, so if you try to call or text me, I won’t get anything until I get home (iMessage works though!).
The rest of our afternoon walk yielded far better results. There is a nice path along a creek that runs from our apartment about a mile towards the center of town. From there you get to walk through the old town, which looks like it was first inhabited long before the US was a country… oh wait, it was! BĂĽlach traces it roots back to the 800’s! That said, it appears that most of the oldest existing buildings are from the late sixteenth century. To the north of the old town, we found the train station, which would be helpful later.
The countryside surrounding BĂĽlach has given us some great views, and excellent exercise. We have both walked more in the last week and a half than in the months preceding our arrival in Switzerland. It’s been great! We really like the hills to the east of town, and have taken a few photos on our many walks there. When it is really clear, you can see the Alps from the top of the hill – they are pretty amazing! We will be getting a closer look soon. To the west of our apartment, across the freeway, there is a heavily forested area with lots of walking/running paths.
The First of August is the Swiss national holiday. The festivities in BĂĽlach took place in a park on top of a hill (in the middle of town). We got to hear a performance by the BĂĽlach Yodeling Club which was pretty great! The end of the night was marked by an enormous bonfire, that is maintained by the fire department, and what seemed like everyone in town setting off fireworks. And we are talking REAL, go-to-Washington-and-buy-them-because-they-are-illegal-in-Oregon fireworks. It was an amazing show around the entire area.
We have now been to ZĂĽrich three times, and everytime we find something awesome. It is a fairly short train ride from BĂĽlach to ZĂĽrich. Once you have ponied up the money to get the train pass for the day, it covers all of the other public transportation in the area. There are so many options! Big trains, little trains, trams, street cars, buses, and a funny little inclined railway, called the Polybahn.
They have a geological museum with an excellent collection of really sparkly minerals. I want all of them (as long as I don’t have to dust them…)! We went to the Zoological museum and saw their impressive fossil exhibits and neat, yet morbid, collection of taxidermied animals from all over the world. The small mountain overlooking ZĂĽrich presents a challenging hike with an amazing view at the top, and last night, watching a nearly full moon come up over the opera house from across the lake, was pretty epic.
