Zurich Trip Report, Dec '07

Alright, this is a bit tardy, but I wanted to give a quick blurb on our trip to Zurich. We took the train from Luxembourg to Zurich on Friday afternoon for a 5.5 hour trip. Thankfully, we had reserved seats, as the train to Zurich was packed! The people sitting in our seats weren't very happy when we showed up and James & I could not believe how long it took them to vacate them. FYI-- you don't have to reserve seats, as it costs a couple extra euro per seat, but during busy commute times, it's very worth it!

Once we arrived in Zurich, we were greeted by the city's indoor Christmas Market in the Rail Station. The highlight was the HUGE Christmas tree covered in over 5,000 Swarovski Crystal Ornaments. There were no lights strung on the tree, but the brilliance of the ornaments made it shine so bright! I think it maybe the most beautiful tree I've ever seen.

Saturday and Sunday we spent roaming the cobblestone streets, seeing the largest clock face in Europe, climbing bell-towers (James carried Anna up... not me :), oogling expensive jewelery, enjoying Christmas decorations and enjoying the panorama of the Lake and Alps behind it.

We had Mexican food with James' friend from Deloitte in LA who's working in Zurich now and had Cheese fondue that was to die for! On our last European vacation, we had considered having fondue in Switzerland, but ruled it out as too pricey (we were on the back-packing hostel type budget). I personally have regretted that decision for years, so this was the fondue to make up for our past mistake. When you're on vacation, sometimes it doesn't matter what it costs, since you're already there you should just splurge!

Oh and we also had at least 2 bretzels each day. Bretzels are a little bit like the soft doughy pretzels sold at baseball games in the states... except these are about 1 million times better. WOW are they good. If you've had one, you know what I mean. They don't have these in Luxembourg, so we made pigs of ourselves over them. We almost bought one that was bigger than our heads, but thought that might be too much!

All in all, it was a good trip, minus Anna waking up 6-7 times each night, leading to serious sleep deprivation. The rating we gave was, "Glad we came, but doesn't deserve a repeat."