Amy's So-Called Life: January 2016

Zurich, Switzerland Oct 6^th – Oct 9^th, 2015

Around 10am on Tuesday, October 6^th, we got on our train and headed back to Zurich. Once we arrived in Zurich, we needed to get to our hotel and check in. I had looked at google maps and saw that our hotel was only about ½ mile from the Hauptbanhof. So, I figured we could totally walk to our hotel with our luggage, instead of trying to figure out the train system first thing. Little did I know what a HUGE mistake that was! The train station is basically at the bottom of the hill, and the entire surrounding city is up on the hill. So, we had to drag our luggage up and up and up. Also, there was not a direct path to our hotel. So, every road we took zigzagged. And if we wanted to cut across a block, instead of following the zigzag, we had to climb steep stairs. It was so taxing that we had to stop and rest every few steps! By the time we finally made it to our hotel, I was sweating like a pig and I was exhausted!

The streets heading to our hotel

Up and up and up! :(

Our Hotel in Zurich

Our Room

View from our balcony

We checked into our hotel just fine and got all situated. Once we got settled, we decided that we needed to get some laundry done first. I figured that we would go to a laundry mat, but Gary made fun of me. He said that we should check the prices and just have the hotel do our laundry for us. However, once we saw that it was $20 for EACH pair of underwear that they washed, we decided to do the laundry ourselves. Gary’s alternative was to just throw all our clothes away and buy new ones, since he figured that would be cheaper than actually washing them. Haha. So, we loaded up our clothes, got train tickets, and headed into the city to a laundry mat.

This is where we really started to see the impact of how insanely expensive Zurich is. I have been to New York City and San Francisco, and these 2 cities seem cheap compared to Zurich. Gary and I both make pretty good money in Michigan, but Zurich is so expensive, we figured that we would be homeless if we lived here and made the same amount of money. Also, just a side note, even though Switzerland uses a different currency (the Swiss Franc), they are almost 1 to 1 with the US dollar. So, we do a couple of loads of laundry. As we are doing that, I run next door to a grocery store to get some drinks and food. I bought a couple of pops and some snacks. Literally, maybe 5 items and it was over $35. And we spent around $20 doing 2 loads of laundry. It was at that point that we figured that we would be doing a lot of free stuff while in Zurich, which basically was walking around and taking pictures! So, this entry is pretty much just pictures and not a lot of writing.

Entrance to Hauptbanhof (main train station)

You see these a lot in Europe: Love locks. People put their name and wedding date on them. Lock it on the fence and throw the key in the water.

Not sure I can even afford looking at this building

I don't know how they drive around here!

Even the Germans think he's insane. lol

Rhubarb pop? Sure, why not?

You have to pay to use the public bathroom. But they are way nice and clean...the name says so!

The Coop! The grocery store we went to for every meal in Zurich!

If you ever need a Swiss Army knife that has 700 tools....they have it!

Gary's long lost relative?

Making chocolate right in the store

On our last day in Switzerland, we decided to take the train and head to another old town called Lucerne. The town was only an hour away by train, but our tickets were $50 bucks a piece round trip! We got the tickets and headed to Lucerne for the day.