Zurich Zooh! April 4, 2010
Posted by tiffany in : Zurich , add a commentWe stared the day with a great breakfast at the hotel; soft boiled egg, Croissant, cold cuts, yogurt, and a variety of cheeses. We pocketed some cheese for a snack for later (we figured at SFr 14.00 each, we should get the most bang for our buck). It was cheaper than the bakery across the street at SFr 23.00 each for a buffet breakfast.
After we went for a walk in an area just outside of Kloten. It was nice, nothing too spectacular, but we did get to see some farm lands and a pretty good view of Kloten and the mountains in the distance.
We walked for about an hour and then took the train into the city. We road the Tram around, sampling the city you could say, looking for a good place to get off and explore. We thought about going into Zug and the surrounding mountains, but that area was just outside of our ticket’s zones. So we ended up at the zooh! which is right down the street from FIFA.
The zooh! turned out to be a great idea! There were many animals that I had never seen before and Zurich’s zoo is much different than the ones in the states. wild animals are allowed to go into other wild animal’s habitats (such as an anteaterneating lunch in the parrot habitat),there were relatively wild fowl roaming the grounds (including storks), and the fences were mostly about two feet high. The pictures shown below are a Shoebill and Chris is feeding a free-range Chicken at the zoo.
The best part was the Masoala Regenwald which is an 11,000 sq meter, completely enclosed Madagascan habitat. There are no fences keeping the animals and people separate; just a path that they ask visitors to stay on. Red Ruffled Lemurs called and jumped from tree to tree around and a
bove us. I loved every minute of it. This was definitely the first time I stood face to face with completely wild animals without any walls between us. It truly was a magical experience!
Zurich’s Waterways April 2, 2010
Posted by Chris in : Zurich , 1 comment so farAfter having breakfast at a bakery across the street from our hotel this morning, we took the train into Zurich proper to wander around the city and fairly quickly discovered, to our delight, that Zurich has a river and fairly large lake that connect near the center of the city!
The view out onto the lake is stunning, featuring a backdrop of mountains in addition to the boats sailing around the lake. The lake is a gorgeous, deep blue and is actually large enough that there are waves splashing into the park that runs along the lake!
Where the river connects to the lake, there is the park on one side and large masses of people on the other side enjoying the sunny day today and being Good Friday I’m guessing that a lot of them were enjoying the beginning of their 3 day weekends!
In the park near the merger of river and lake, there is this giant clock colored with pansies, the hands of the clock were probably around five feet long which made the clock both large and smelly! (In a good way)
Along the park as well were several places offering food, lake cruises, and more; however, they were all quite pricey so we opted out for now, maybe another day.
While walking through the park, we found a larger park attached along the water and moved into it, enjoying slightly more separation from the city so that there was less noise and more people playing Frisbee and kicking a soccer ball, among others. We also found a aviary in this park that held some interesting birds, including a giant Victoria Crown Pigeon(<–).
First Day In Zurich April 1, 2010
Posted by tiffany in : Zurich , add a comment
We took a TGV train to Zurich today and we’re planning to stay for three days. We arrived and learned that our hotel was not completely honest about their location and we ended up spending a large amount of Francs on cab fair. I suppose we have learned a lesson; “10 minutes from the city center” should not by taken into consideration unless the mode of transportation is taken into account(10 minutes on a Swiss freeway equals 40 Francs).
Switzerland is interesting in the fact that they are not a part of the EU, they have four official languages (French, English, Italian, and German), and they still use the Swiss Francs (current value: 1.00USD to 1.05 Franc).
So today we wandered around what appears to be a bedroom city to Zurich(much like Bellaire is to Houston) and found a couple of interesting things to look at. We saw a candy warehouse and couldn’t help ourselves. We had to go and check it out! It was all candies that Haribo (the company that makes gummy bears) makes, so they were all assorted gummy candies. There were milk cows, eggs, lizards, and of course bears all made of candy.
So, from the looks of Zurich it seems like a very run of the mill European city but as we do more and more research into what we can do while here,we are learning that it has so much that we may end up feeling like we’re running a marathon! There is a whole area of Zurich that apparently looks very much like it did in the 16oo’s (apparently the people who work there act the part too). Also, from our impression today, Swiss people are usually happy to help and forgive you for messing up their language (even though there are four to choose from, not everyone speaks all of them).
