Zurich!

This weekend I was in Zurich, having a completely fabulous time!

I went with two friends that I currently work with, and two who left the school at the end of last year.  It was great to see them again, and have a proper catch up.

Everyone's flights were delayed on Friday, so we didn't end up getting to the hotel until about 11.30pm.  The hotel was a lovely 5*, about a 20 minute walk from the city centre.  We knew how expensive Zurich is, so had bought some prosecco at duty free.  Maev had bought a bottle of Gin instead because it was the same price as the prosecco!  We had a couple of glasses of prosecco in our room on Friday night, before bed at about 1.  We were all pretty tired from being at work all day.

We got up late-ish on Saturday and headed out to find breakfast.  We ended up in a lovely cafe in the old town having scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese and bread.  Delicious, and not too expensive for Zurich's standard.  It was brunch by the time we finished, so we followed it up with a delicious ice cream cone.  Sean won the best flavour - his was mango, and was super yum!

We had a lovely wander around.  Zurich has a nice chilled vibe to it, and we enjoyed not doing lots of touristy things, just being together.

We wandered by the river (beautifully clear - you can see the bottom) to lake Zurich, and decided to go on an hour and a half boat tour of the lake.  You see about half of the lake in that time. It's very pretty, and there were lots of sailing boats out because it was windy.  The weather was actually really good.  It was meant to rain all day, but last minute the forecast changed and we had sunny spells and cloud.  It was really quite hot when the sun was out.  The boat ride was nice.  I enjoyed looking at all of the millionaires houses on the lake front, and deciding which one we would have.  We had got seats out the back of the boat, but the wind was a bit too chilly, so we came inside, and enjoyed a couple of (very expensive) Hugos/beers.

On our way back through the town, we spotted a terrace near the river with lots of tables.  It looked lovely so we went to investigate.  There was a band set up, with a dance floor and all of the old ladies were dancing, and the old couples were chachacha-ing!  It was very cute. We stayed there for a couple more Hugos and some chips, before heading back along the river.  We could hear a brass band from further along, and as we got closer, we could see Gondola style boats with people dressed traditionally standing on platforms on the back of them.  They had really long poles with a flat bit at the end, as as we were watching, two boats rowed towards each other and the men with the poles tried to knock the other person into the water!!!  I can only describe it as 'boat jousting'. Apparently this is a thing in Switzerland, according to Auntie Marianne!  It was hilarious. 

We ended up in a pub, drinking a couple of mojitos, then had a huge bowl of pesto pasta at a pasta takeaway place.  It was tasty and best of all, very cheap!  We went back to the hotel and finished up the Gin and prosecco.  I don't like Gin, so I wasn't too bad the next morning, but the other 4 had a litre bottle of Gin between them on Saturday night!

On Sunday, I got up earlier than everyone else and went off to get the train to visit Uncle Chris in Kyburg.  He met me at the bus stop with an umbrella and a hug.  It was lovely to see him and Auntie Marianne, who I hadn't seen since out wedding nearly 3 years ago.  Auntie Marianne cooked a wonderful lunch of soup, humus, bread and salad from the garden.  It was really quite chilly, so we had the fire on, and huddled around it to look at their holiday photos from Iceland.  It was a lovely afternoon. Uncle Chris drove me to the airport, where I met the two who were coming back to Germany with me.  It was a fabulous weekend, but now I'm really tired!