Zurich and Baden

Posted on 2009/10/11 19:33:44 (October 2009).

[Sunday 11th October]
Started out the day with a late morning stroll around Zurich. I had always got the impression it wasn't generally considered much of a tourist destination, but in my opinion at least it really is quite an attractive city. I took quite a lot of pictures today, and I hope based on these you'll agree with me.

There seems to be some sort of beer festival or something going on inside Zurich station (it has a cavernous main hall), so for lunch today we went to a kind of miniature beer garden on the periphery of this, where I had a pretzel, Chie had a bratwurst, and as it would seem rude not to we each had a beer as well. This was surprisingly fun - there was rather manic traditional Swiss/German music playing, and there were dogs barking at each other and some sort of alarm going off and it was generally all rather endearingly manic. Plus the pretzel was really rather good indeed.

We spent most of the afternoon in Baden, the main reason for going being the hot springs, but we also had a bit of a wander round the town while we were there, and this too is not an unattractive place. Visiting hot springs in countries outside Japan has become something of a hobby of mine and Chie's, and whilst the place we went to today was somewhat basic and not particularly aesthetically outstanding, it did still make for a very pleasant and relaxing hour or two, lounging around in the just-about-right 35 degree water.

We headed back to Zurich around 4 (it's only a short train ride away) and then went for another stroll around Zurich, with an eye to finding somewhere to have dinner. We eventually settled on going for as Swiss as it gets - a fondue restaurant. The service was a bit patchy but the food was pretty good albeit that fondue gets a bit overwhelming pretty quickly. Ours had morels in which was a nice touch.

Chie had to fly back to London in the evening, as she had a seminar to go to early the next morning, so not long after dinner we headed back to the station, from where she got on a train to the airport.

I then spent the remainder of the evening back at my corporate apartment place, given my rather hectic travel schedule over the past few days an early night was definitely called for!

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