We were out the door and on the train at 9am to begin our convoluted trip to Zurich. A train to
Grutschalp, a cable car to Lauterbrunnen, a train to Interlaken, another to Bern and a quick jump onto the last one to Zurich .
We got chatting to a lady on the Lauterbrunnen train, she had lived there her whole life, but had visited Australia and remembered the black swans of Perth! She told us that the students in this area had little interest in learning French, preferring English. Switzerland is supposed to be bi-lingual, German and French. There was nowhere that I found any French even a little bit helpful.
The views on the trip were once again awesome and we enjoyed all the beauty Switzerland has to offer.
We pulled into Zurich and somehow managed to walk out of the right side of the station, find the correct street and were at our hotel within 10 minutes. We were early but our room was ready. It is comfortable and clean and should be great for a couple of nights. We were on the streets by 1pm and off to explore another city.
I had decided that Switzerland was the super model of the world, all she has to do is look pretty and we will pay lots of money. She doesn't need to be nice all the time, just when she wants to.
Then we found Zurich . This is not the prettiest of the cities we have been to. We did approach from the railway station and somehow managed to walk the very long way past their social security agency, so our first impression was not of her best side.
We walked along the river, through a park where there was some sort of peace dance/singalong going on. There were police there monitoring. We came to an intersection with many lanes. We had to navigate through cars, bikes and trams going in all directions. Follow the locals and go for it! We made it into the shopping district, along Bahnhostrasse.There are a lot of watch shops and we went into quite a few of them. Most of them are out of our price range. Ken thought they all were!
I had read about an area called Europaallee, which was supposed to be funky and good for shopping. It took us a while to get there and when we did we found some amazing outdoor adventure type shops and not much else. There was a bar, Loft 5, which looked nice so we stopped for a drink there.
We walked back and ended up in the Old Town which is actually really pretty and full of character . There are a couple of old churches and many fountains. Apparently Zurich has 1200 fountains, all with drinkable water.
We looked at more watches and then made our way back to the hotel. We had walked a lot of kms in a few hours and needed a breather.
We had dinner at a restaurant on the west side of town, not far from where we were staying, called Lily's. It is a really cool place, with shared tables and an extensive Asian menu, from Japanese to Indian, and everything in between. They do their own beers as well. I had a ginger one and Ken had something else! We shared some gyoza dumplings and then I had teriyaki pork and Ken had a Thai noodle dish. It was all really good. The clientele appeared to be mostly locals, this is not really a touristy area. After a good dinner we strolled past the shops and made it back to our hotel.

Steps 19,602
Kms walked 13.7