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Spain Plus Two Cities in 2022, Zürich

Parts

Friday, October 14

It was nice to arrive in Zürich. It is pedestrian friendly and has a more “German” feel than Marseille or Spain. It is interesting how cities can have different feelings in their streets and transit.

Apple on Rennweg in Zürich at night.

I walked a few blocks to my hotel, checked in, and bought a Zürich Card (for transit and museum discounts) in an app. I set it to start at noon the next day so that its 72 hours would cover my trip to the airport.

Then I went out for dinner at Hiltl, the Guiness-certified world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, opened in 1898. It is a strange mix of formal service, linen napkins and heavy silverware, and expensive menu items on one hand and, on the other, a casual high-volume priced-by-weight buffet. I was not hugely impressed by the buffet quality; I have had better, or at least as good, vegetarian buffets in Prague and in Keene, New Hampshire. Nothing on the buffet was very unusual: salad ingredients, potato salad, onion rings, samosas, warm potato and cheese casserole, Indian dishes, rices, spring rolls, and quiche. If I went back, I would try a menu item to see if it matched the formal service.

On the way back, I happened across the Apple Store you see to the right.

Saturday, October 15

Pistachio-filled Gipfeli.

Löw Delights via Say Chocolate.

I had not booked breakfast at this hotel, so I headed for the food places under the train station and found this Gipfeli (similar to a croissant) filled with pistachio cream. There is not as much cream in it as you might think; it is mostly just the ends, not filled all the way through.

Since my transit-tourist card started at noon, I set out walking, to see the city and to find a couple of chocolate stores. One, Berg und Tal (mountain and valley), was a specialty food store said to have some chocolate, and I arrived as the market it was in opened, but Berg und Tal did not open for at least another hour. I continued on to Löw Delights, but the address I had was in a commercial/industry building, not retail. Then I walked to Say Chocolate, back toward the city center. Coincidentally, Say Chocolate carried Löw Delights.

Google office between a shop and a restaurant.

Apple on Rennweg in Zürich during the day.

Produce basket.

Continuing toward the city center, I passed Google between Opia (a “concept shop” with fashion items, perfumes, and home accessories) and Yalda (a restaurant). That seems like an odd juxtaposition. Near the big river, Limmat, I passed a farmer’s market. One stand was selling produce, including these prepared baskets (see the cardboard baskets inside the plastic crate). I am not sure whether they are sold as food or decoration. “Schale” means “peels” or “rinds.”

Honold.

Max Chocolatier.

Vanini Swiss Chocolate.

Vollenweider Chocolatier Confiseur.

The city center is a dense tourist/business area, and some chocolate stores were just a few hundred meters apart, and a few closer than that. I visited Confiserie Bachmann, Honold, Vanini Swiss Chocolate, Teuscher, Max Chocolatier, Aeschbach Chocolatier, and Vollenweider Chocolatier Confiseur in short order. Then I went back to my hotel to drop off five purchases. I walked 7.2 miles before noon. For lunch, I went back to the Hauptbahnhoff (main train station) and got a chicken sandwich, and then I went to the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, which is next to the train station.

The museum is large and has several exhibits, permanent and temporary, which I will not cover. The history of Switzerland exhibit was fairly interesting. I photographed the document reproductions below to show how the cantons sealed the documents to ensure authenticity. The exhibit also touched on issues such as how an obligation of a canton to provide for its residents resulted in registering people to be residents of a specific canton, which works against migrants (internal to Switzerland, not immigrants) even if that was not the original intent.

Reproduction of foundational document for Switzerland.

Reproduction of the Alliance of the Waldstätte.

I went back to Berg und Tal, then to Cabaret Voltaire for a tiny art exhibit suggested by Lonely Planet. A lot of my walking was around the Limmat river, and that is where these photos are from.

Zürich scenes.

Last for the day, before dinner, was Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland’s biggest art museum. It was late and approaching closing time, so I whipped through the museum. Below you see Pixel Forest Turicum at different moments.

Pixel Forest Turicum by Pipilotti Rust.

Limmathof.

For dinner, I wanted to try Alpenrose, recommended by Lonely Planet, but it was closed for a private party and booked or closed the few remaining nights I was in town, so I crossed the street to its sister restaurant. The food was very well prepared, but it was a different menu from Alpenrose and not what I would have preferred that night.

Sunday, October 16

I started the day heading for the train station, on my way to Lindt headquarters. At the station, I got a pretzel with Cheddar. The Gipfeli was better.

I expected Lindt’s Home of Chocolate museum to be routine, but it was pretty good. They put a lot of work into it, had good exhibits, and had information I had not seen before, including some details of chocolate production and research. So I recommend the visit. I spent 90 minutes in the museum, on the self-guided tour.

There are a number of products in the headquarters store I have not seen in the US, including some vegan chocolate, but nothing momentous. It seemed to me that the truffles in the museum tasted fresher and better than in the US. I do not know if that was due to freshness, a different formulation, or me being hungry. I only bought a little, since I knew I would be bringing home better stuff.

Lindt Home of Chocolate.

In the Lindt headquarters store.

In the Lindt headquarters store.

In the Lindt headquarters store.

Big whisk.

In front of the Lindt headquarters, and a block toward the shore, are these views of Zürichsee (Lake Zürich).

Kilchberg view.

Next I took the train to Uetliberg, a mountain by Zürich. The train goes most of the way up, leaving 812 meters to walk.

View from Uetliberg.

Delighted By Gandhi at Beetnut.

I decided to walk down and back into the city, which was a mistake. It took 75 minutes with a very steep descent on a leafy gravel path, which was fine for me but not for the Lindt chocolate. It was a cool day, but either the sun still did a number on my backpack or some of the chocolate in the backpack was near my back while I was warm from the hike. Fortunately, only one item was significantly affected, and it was one I planned to eat that day anyway. Just a little more melty than planned.

I had lunch at Beetnut. To the left is their Delighted by Gandhi bowl, with a rice mix, kale, sweet potatoes, fennel, courgettes (zuchini), beluga lentils, green beans, marinated fennel, cashews, and Malabar sauce. It was yummy except I think the rice should have been cooked a little more.

I spent the rest of the day exploring Zürich on foot and also seeking out one more chocolate store, Schwarzenbach. It was closed Sundays. While walking around, I noticed there is a Sprüngli (chocolate) store in the train station and two more in the shopping complex underneath it. But their web site lists five in the train station and that complex, so apparently I missed two.

Zürich view.

Sprüngli.

Monday, October 17

Läderach.

Zürich train display.

In the morning, I went back to Schwarzenbach. It is two shops side-by-side, one with packaged chocolates, and the other with spices, dried fruits, and other foods. There was nothing I wanted too much there, so I went to Vanini, Vollenweider, and Läderach to buy boxes to take home to share. That went quickly; it is almost absurd how quickly you can zig-zag across a city with a good public transit system.

I mixed up my times and just missed an Old Town Walking Tour. So I took a train to a mall, Glattzentrum, instead. Recall the awful train sign in Barcelona? This is a train sign done right. You can easily see each train’s ID, its time, its destination, several of its stops, which side of the platform it will be on, which compartments are first and second class, and where they are relative to the “B” position marker in the station. That is a lot of information very easily perceived.

At the mall, people were putting their children into the machine below, but it does not work. They still come out at the bottom, and you have to go get them.

Slide at mall.

Apple Store at Glattzentrum in Zürich.

Food places at the mall were asking for 16.90 to 21.90 Swiss francs (US $17.05 to $22.10) for poké bowls. At that price, I pass. While seeing what there was to see at the mall, I kept an eye out for souvenirs. Sometimes you find an interesting thing in the regular stores instead of the tourist shops. One place selling knickknacks for the home and variety of other little things seemed like a good prospect, but nothing fit the bill for me.

At least the mall had an Apple store, seen to the right. That makes two Apple stores in the Zürich area, making it the best city on this trip.

USB power on tram.

Traditional Swiss macaroni.

Back in Zürich proper, I photographed the USB outlet on the tram to show you. Then I went to Restaurant Swiss Chuchi at Hotel Adler to get a supposedly traditional Swiss meal before I left town.

Augenarzt / Augenärztin.

I noticed a sign for an eye doctor, and I took a photo of it to contrast with another I had seen near my hotel. This one is for an Augenarzt. The other one is for an Augenärztin. The difference is one is a boy eye doctor, and the other is a girl eye doctor. The language is gendered, of course, but this puts it right out there on the street for everybody to see what sex the doctor is before you go in. I wonder if using just the root form on a sign, not in a sentence, would be considered okay or seem normal grammatically?

It was still early afternoon, so I had time for one more small museum. Beyer Watches & Jewellry [sic] has a one-room Clock and Watch Museum with some interesting exhibits, including several sundials with mechanisms for adjusting for the time of year. There also very early time-keeping devices, including a clepsydra. It is a conic bowl with evenly spaced marks, so presumably the cone shape compensates for the water pressure, resulting a uniform decrease in water height. I would not say the small museum was worth the normal 10 Swiss franc admission, but it was free with the Zürich Card.

Zürichsee.

I walked to the lake (reaching into the city center) and here and there around the city center some more.

Zürich view.

A significant part of Zürich in and around the old town is weird mix. It seems somewhat but not primarily a tourist area and has some high-end stores and some local shops. A huge amount of it looks like retail; it looked to me at first as if there was very little housing. However, there may be a lot of residential space mostly unnoticed in the upper stores of buildings with retail shops on the ground floor. I also happened across a residential area at top of a little hill that most tourists bypass. Maps navigation directed me on a level path around it, but I decided to explore and found the neighborhood shown below.

Residential neighborhood.

Zürich view.

Then I was back near the train station. Asking prices for poké bowls in city center were 24.50 to 29.50 Swiss francs!

Below is a small fraction of the Shopville under the train station. It goes a few blocks in multiple directions. Escalators and stairs go down to more train platforms, and others go to ground level tracks above.

Shopville view.

Tuesday, October 18

My trip to the airport may have been the shortest anywhere ever for me, including walking to the train station. The train ride was only nine minutes, and it lets you out in the airport, so I think the total time from hotel to airport was 20 minutes, maybe 25. It look longer to get from the airline lounge to the gate, 35 minutes. (That involved a long line for an escalator to a line to passport control to a wait for a train, then a ride to the terminal, then up two flights of stairs and a walk to the end of the terminal.)

My phone says I walked 176 miles on this trip.

Flying SWISS (Swiss International Air Lines) was pretty nice, especially the food service. It was good restaurant quality, including:

Pumpkin, apple, and kale salad with beetroot hummus.
Pikeperch fillet with Durban curry sauce and sweet potatoes with kohlrabi, romanesco, and sugar snap peas.
Goldinger Gourmet and Girenbaderli cheese with Swiss pear bread.

And that’s it for this trip.

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Path: Eric’s Site / Eric / Travel / Europe 2022 / Zürich

Related: Europe 2022, Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Marseille, Zürich (Site Map)