Back to the Mountains

Zurich

After the non-stop walking and touring in london and edinburgh, I was looking forward to going to Zurich and visiting with my friend Cecelia.  I also met Cecelia in Los Alamos and she's italian but just moved to zurich for a phd in mathematics.  Ceci met me at the airport and we took the bus back to her apartment and after settling in for a little bit we adventured out for dinner at a classic swiss cuisine restaurant.  Aside from the cost for a single trip on the bus (nearly 5 francs), this was my first introduction to just how expensive switzerland is.  Any entree starts at 20 francs almost everywhere!  It's unbelievable. The only comfort was that the swiss franc and the US dollar are worth almost the same amount so I wasn't spending even more money as I would if it were euros or pounds.  We both ordered a sausage and the classic potato salad side.  It was very tasty!  When we returned to the apartment we planned for the weekend.  We decided to go to Lucern on Sunday and travel the mount pilatus and do the silver round trip.  On Saturday we did a bit of a walking tour of Zurich.  The weather was sort of crappy out but we went to an art museum which was really awesome!  I got to see some famous works of art by monet and van gogh.  We spent nearly 3 hours wandering through the exhibits. It was lovely.  We later stumbled into a street festival in the old part of the city and stayed there for beers and listened to a band play followed by karaoke.  That was hilarious.  Listening to swiss people singing american songs is everything you can imagine.  I had 2 beers and actually felt a little tipsy.  I suspect they were stronger brews than I had thought.  Mount Pilatus was amazing.  It was a little expensive to do the trip but it was totally worth it.  We saw the mountain, the lakes, and incredible 360 views.  It was gorgeous.  It was also very cold at the top of the mountain and I was glad that Ceci convinced me to rethink my idea of wearing shorts.  The next few nights we stayed in and made dinner because it was truly too expensive not to.  I think, admittedly, I was lazy in Zurich and didn't wander enough but at the same time, I was interested in sitting by the lake and enjoying quiet relaxing time reading my book.  So that's what I did.  I don't have many pictures because I didn't want to haul my big camera around with me.  One of the evenings, Ceci met me at the lake after work and it was a warm day so we sat at the lake with our feet in the water, watching the sunset, eating carry out food from the grocery store and discussing all kinds of things.  One of my favorite moments.  From Zurich, I went to Paris!