Zurich Switzerland: Gateway to The Swiss Alps

After I graduated from college back in 2017 I decided to celebrate by doing a European travel adventure with one of my best friends Cory. So we took a couple of weeks and decided to visit Zurich Switzerland, Munich Germany, Vienna Austria, and Prague Czech Republic. I’ll discuss our time in Switzerland in this post and then follow up with posts about the others. Zurich is medium sized working Swiss city that sits right on a beautiful fresh water lake. Switzerland was by far the most expensive place we visited on our European adventure, but it was well worth the price. We traveled to Zurich from the United States, and had an early flight that ended up landing in Zurich in the morning. Unfortunately, for us, It was night time in our heads when we landed. Luckily our excitement gave us the energy to stay up and check out the city right away. After landing at what seemed to be the cleanest airport I had ever been in, we hopped on a train that took us six miles into the city center. From there we walked to our hotel, Gasthaus 210. We were staying in a small hotel that sat above a convenience store on the North side of the city. To our surprise one of the first things we saw upon entering our room was a naked man in the shower through the window in the building adjacent to ours. What a way to start the trip! We dropped off our bags and walked down to the city center near the lake. It was about a 25 minute walk in total. There is a river we followed which took us straight from the train station to the lake. All along the river we admired the buildings and European architecture.

I remember the language barrier being more difficult than I thought it would be. Even the simple task of ordering ice cream was a bit of a challenge, but we were able to figure it out! If only I knew in that moment I would eventually be living in Tokyo, the language barrier wouldn’t have seemed too bad! I also remember seeing very attractive girls everywhere I looked. Too bad we didn’t speak the language, and too bad we were too shy to see if they spoke English! Anyways, some of the highlights of our orientation walk included old churches, an opera house, and a Lindt Chocolate factory! We wanted to go check out the chocolate factory, but it was closed for renovations. The highlight of our walk was definitely the lake. There were lots of sailboats, and swans out enjoying the water.

At this point we were getting pretty hungry so we stopped at a place that had a line out the door! It was a noodle joint called Tschingg. It was kind of like subway but for noodles. You chose your noodle type, sauce, meat, and other add ins. Then it was served in a large to go container. It was pretty tasty and very filling.

We took our noodles to a bench right on the water and ate and chilled. It was really peaceful. After the food we started to head back up along the river toward out hotel. We stopped periodically along the way to check out the sights and even dip our feet into the water. By this point we had been up for nearly 34 hours straight and our beds were calling. The last stop we made before bed was to the tourist information booth in the train station. There we got a map of the city showing all of the cool sights to check out. We also booked a day trip up to the alps. More on that to come!

The next morning we did something shameful. We got up and ate at the McDonalds right across the street from our hotel. Typical Americans! It was close, cheap, and easy. No regrets. The food was actual quite different than in the states. We both got turkey burgers and the quality was surprisingly good. After our food we set out for the Grossmunster church. The crypt of this church was the oldest room in the city! We were even able to go up into the church’s towers and get a great view of the city. We were fortunate enough to be the only people visiting the church so we had it all to ourselves.

The Grossmunster was a fun visit. It was very old and you could tell that there was a lot of history there. It wasn’t super big and elegant like many other European churches, but you could tell that it was a very important part of the city.

To be honest, I wouldn’t consider Zurich to be a very touristy city. I do not remember really running into anyone that looked foreign. This was kind of cool because we got a good taste for what life was really like here. Our next stop of the day was to follow the locals and head to the lake! That was where everyone was hanging out and we wanted a piece of the action. We were even smart and brought our bathing suits! We walked a ways down the lake on a nice pedestrian path loaded with benches to sit and admire the water. There were also tons of parks and inviting outdoor areas where people were congregated grilling and having a good time. We eventually found a somewhat secluded spot and decided this was our place to get in. The water felt great, and was a nice way to cool down from the hot sun. The bottom of the lake was a bit rocky, but the water was calm and it made for perfect place to float and relax. After our swim, we found a lovely lady friend who agreed to take a picture with us!

Okay, so maybe it was a statue, oh well. We decided to check out a park near the lake and found a climbing wall. So we climbed! The wall was not very tall, but it was long. The goal was to see how far you could make it across. Cory was declared the winner as he was able to make it across the entire thing. I took second place.

After the park we started to head back toward the hotel to clean up before dinner. We stopped by some shops, and checked out a local market as we explored the city farther. For dinner we decided we need to try a cheese fondue place! We ended up choosing a nice little spot called Walliser Kanne. We split a big pot of cheese fondue that was served with various breads, vegetables, and meats to dip in. They put the fondue in the middle of the table over an open flame, and then we each got skewers to dip into the melted cheese. It was fun and tasty. We also split a schnitzel with fries which might have even been better than the fondue! We got way to much food, but did our best to clean our plates

At the end of the meal our waitress said that if we wrote a review of the dinner she would give us a giant Toblerone bar. So we quickly agreed and were able to finish our meal with some Swiss chocolate. It was perfection. The dinner was definitely on the pricey side, but I was able to check eating Swiss fondue in Switzerland off of my bucket list! After dinner we walked around the city a little longer, and then headed to bed. We needed all of our energy saved for our adventure to the Alps the next day!

We woke up the next morning and went to the bus station. We hopped on a bus that took us to the town of Lucerne about 45 min away. We had booked a tour of Mt. Pilatus through Gray Line tours and we were in for an awesome adventure. As we got away from the Zurich, the countryside turned to rolling hills, and then the mountains came into view.

We were finally getting into the Swiss Alps and although these were not the biggest of them, it was still impressive. The bus stopped at a gondola station where we were given tickets to get up to the top. I couldn’t help but wish it was snowing and we were hopping on a gondola to ski in the Swiss Alps, but there was no snow in the middle of the summer! Cory and I hopped into our own gondola and started our ascent to the top of Mt. Pilatus.

As you can see from the pictures, the gondola ride up to the base of the mountain was spectacular. The views were amazing and we both knew that they were only going to get better. The first gondola was only able to take us from Lucerne to the base of Mt. Pilatus. To get to the top we would need to get on a super gondola. This gondola was able to hold around 50 people at a time and moved at a very quick pace.

Once we reached the summit, we stepped out of the super gondola and were surprised to find a small collection of buildings sitting on the summit. There was a restaurant, gift shop, and museum displaying interesting information about Mt. Pilatus. Additionally there were several trails that allowed people to explore around the top of the mountain. There was a descent amount of people, but by going on the trails we were able to get away from the crowds and enjoy the scenery. Below are a ton of pictures I hope you enjoy them!

Cory and I did our best to hike up all of the trails at the top. We even found several tunnels that went through the mountain and spit out with cool views from different vantage points. We yelled echo everywhere we went and we got some great responses. The acoustics up there were second to none.

The complex at the top of the mountain was very well put together. It had some unique architecture, and it honestly seemed to truly fit up there quite nicely. They even had Swiss horn players belting out their songs which was an authentic touch. Off one side of the mountain face there was several people paragliding off of the thermals. Let’s just say that is now on my bucket list! Some of you are probably wondering how tall Mt. Pilatus is. Good question, I’ll answer it in meters and feet below.

Apparently the gondola was only for getting up the mountain. To get down we took the cog railway. It is actually the steepest cogwheel railway in the world with a grade of 48%. It was steep, but controlled and it was really cool to go down the other side of the mountain and see all the sights directly from the mountain’s face.

On the way down I was really impressed with the greenery all around us. It was very peaceful and I really wanted to get out and lay in the grass and chill. There were several mountain houses on the way down, and I couldn’t help but wonder what its like living in such isolation. We ended up stopping a couple of times on the way down to let some locals hop on the train to hitch a ride to their house. At least they have a quick way to get down into the city if they need something.

Once we reached the bottom of the mountain, we had one last method of transportation to complete our tour. Since the cog railway dropped us off on the complete opposite side of the mountain from where we started we had to get back to the city. So the final leg was by boat. This tour truly had it all. We boarded a rather large ship and set out to cross the lake back to Lucerne. It was about a half hour boat ride and once again the views were spectacular.

As we traveled along the lake we were able to sit back, relax and enjoy the day. It was a very peaceful ride, and the scenery was the perfect mix of staggering mountains and Swiss style buildings. Between the bus, gondola, cog railway, and now the boat we checked off most modes of transportation all in one day. If only we could have flown somewhere! Here are some more boat pictures.

Once we docked back in Lucerne we had a couple of hours to check out the town before we were bused back to Zurich. So we decided to visit the six story Rolex building, and a gigantic candy store. The Rolex store was honestly unbelievable. I didn’t know there could be so many different watches. However the craziest thing was that there were so many people actually buying these super expensive watches. Rolex is a Swiss brand so it makes since that they would have a gigantic store in Switzerland. Maybe one day I’ll get myself a Rolex!

The final stop of the day was a giant candy store. This candy store was probably the coolest candy store I had ever seen. For starters it was massive, and had a huge variety of different Swiss chocolates and other tasty treats. The crown jewel of this candy paradise was that it had an entire wall that was a chocolate waterfall! Needless to say I was impressed, and now want a chocolate waterfall in my own home.

After the candy store we loaded back onto the bus and went back to Zurich. Overall the excursion only cost us $160 each, and we both agreed that this was well worth the cost of an all day adventure to the Swiss Alps! For dinner we stopped by a local grocery store and got some pasta meals to go, and a fresh loaf of bread. We went to bed pretty early because we had a bus to Munich Germany in the morning for phase two of our European adventure. Overall Switzerland was a blast and a good starting place for our trip, but I think we were both pretty excited to get to Munich and check out the giant beer halls. More to come on that in my next post!