My Travel Blog

Run in in Zurich:

After leaving Venice a day early, we headed to Zurich, Switzerland, which was one of my favorite places of the whole trip. The way we traveled was by train. This is how we mostly traveled through Europe. Once arriving in Zurich, we made our way to our hotel and checked in. In total we spent five days in Zurich. One of these days we did a day trip to Lucerne and Titlis (this will be my next blog post). In Zurich, we did a lot of relaxing. We were still adjusting from the Vancouver to Europe time change and were exhausted from traveling so far, as well as our experience in Venice. However, the time change and exhaustion took less of a toll on me than it did my mother. Most mornings I would wake up first and walk around the city. On one of my morning walks, I sat down at a little cafe and ordered a hot chocolate. At a table near me sat the one and only spider-man. Spider-man was sitting there not eating or drinking anything because of his mask, but he was still being a kind person and paying people’s bills. That morning the friendly neighbourhood spider-man was a true embodiment of Switzerland natives: kind, friendly and creating a sense of community. After this I did not see him again and assume he returned to his neighborhood duties.

Zurich Chocolate and Cheese:

Switzerland is known for their chocolate so one of the things we wanted to do was a chocolate tour. The one that came up the most when searching was a Lindt factory chocolate tour. However, we decided to not do this tour and created our own self guided tour. We found many chocolate shops on google maps and mapped out which ones we wanted to visit. After deciding on which ones we would visit, I mapped out the order we would take and then off we went. I highly recommend doing this. Creating your own tour is a great way to save money and it also allows you to go at your own pace and to only the places you want. In most tours, there are usually one or two places you do not want to go, so creating your own tour avoids that. Also, you can get side tracked this way and it’s totally okay. For example, one of the chocolate places we went to was right next to St. Peter’s. After stumbling across this, we looked around and then continued on our way. This way we were also able to explore the streets of Zurich and go into other places, such as souvenir shops. Along with Switzerland being known for their chocolate, they are also known for their cheese. The hotel we stayed at had a restaurant attached to it and here they served cheese fondue and chocolate fondue. The cheese fondue was amazing. You were able to dip bread, potatoes, vegetables and meat into the melted cheese. Honestly, anywhere in Zurich I am sure has amazing cheese fondue. At our hotel restaurant, the dinner was so good that we decided to eat there a second night. Instead of cheese fondue, we decided to try a raclette which is where you grill your own meat and melt your own cheese and then pour it over top of your bread, potatoes, meat, etc., instead of dipping it into a pot of melted cheese like with the fondue. Overall both dinners were very good, but I preferred the fondue over the raclette. After the raclette, we ended up trying the chocolate fondue which was also amazing, but rich. For this dessert, you were provided with fruit for dipping.

Would I go again?

I would absolutely go back to Zurich. Zurich was one of my favorite places we visited the whole five week trip. They had great everything there. Amazing food, chocolate, souvenirs and so much more. Zurich also had great people and very clean streets. Everyone we came across was super helpful and kind to us. I also really like looking at historical buildings in Europe and Zurich has really interesting buildings to look at and explore.

Highlights of Zurich: Self guided chocolate tour, morning walks, fondue and souvenirs.

Fun fact about Zurich: Somewhere in Zurich, I was told that Zurich used 59 seconds in a minute instead of 60 on their clocks. This was to help keep people on time or early. However, after some research I do not think this is true. I have been unable to find anything that supports Zurich putting 59 seconds on clocks rather than 60.