Kittens From The Dark Side

This is the last post documenting our wonderful memorable Switzerland trip!

It was a bit sad to leave beautiful Switzerland, BUT getting home is always nice, too, especially since we live in a gorgeous place!

We woke up to another extremely humid and sticky day. There were clouds and mist over the lake and the mountains.

Thankfully, Greg had figured out the bus situation from Horw back to Zürich and to our accommodations closer to the airport.

Made it onto the bus with our luggage!

And then we got on the train!

There's our luggage.

Near the train station is never the cutest.

But it gets cuter quickly:

Here's my outfit for the day:

I may have fallen asleep, even on a shortish train ride. Trains have a soporific effect on me!

Ta-da! Zürich Hauptbahnhof!

Lots of trains coming and going, as well as lots of busses and streetcars outside the station.
In larger towns, many train stations have a shopping mall underneath, as well! This one definitely did. We poked around down there to see what our lunch options were.

We found my Mom some coffee!

It was from a neat automated machine.

And we found her a hot pizza bread!
She was still a bit under the weather, so we tried hard to take care of her, but we did have to get her to the airport the next day, so we couldn't leave her in bed.

Yum! Like the Germans and the Austrians (where I spent my study abroad time during college), the Swiss love bread!!! I miss good bread since I have to be gluten-free now.

Greg and my Dad found sausages done in the traditional way (using a baguette-type bread, chopping the top off, boring a hole down the middle, drizzling in mustard(s), then putting in the sausage (in Austria they put the bread top back on like a cute little hat!) My Dad said it's a great idea because the mustard (they don't really use ketchup much in Europe) doesn't squirt out! In Austria the vendor usually ask, "Scharf oder süß (pronounced zoos)?" meaning "Spicy mustard or sweet mustard?" Greg said the Swiss vendor didn't ask - there were options available, but it was apparently self-applied.

Train stations are very interesting places. Pretty noisy and busy, but the people-watching is fun.

Look how pretty the station is from outside!

Greg and my Dad went out investigating to see if they could find the museum. We didn't get a chance to see any museums on this trip, sadly. I would have liked to include a couple, but Switzerland doesn't have a huge number, and we had other important things scheduled.

What a beautiful city!

While my Mom and I were sitting in the station, there was an altercation! There were two groups of people, at least one person clearly intoxicated, and there was a punch thrown!

The police came and chatted to both groups. Some people were taken away gently.

See the Matterhorn on this train?

Here's the end of the track.

Trains have a head on both ends so that they can come into the station head-first and leave head-first, too, without turning around.

We checked in for our flight the next day!

After the men came back from their exploring to watch the luggage, my Mom and I went exploring a bit. I was hoping to find some more of my favorite chocolate bars to take home, but we couldn't find a Migros in the station and Coop didn't carry them (because they were a Migros in-house brand).

This weird lady must be the guardian angel of the Zürich airport!

Part of Greg's snack:

The reason there was a lot of exploring is because we couldn't check into our accommodation yet. I had planned a day of exploring the city, but Mom wasn't feeling great and we were leaving in the early morning so we decided to be less active and get settled in our hotel sooner rather than later.

And then we were back on the train!

It was a long and frustrating experience for Greg and me to get to our hotel and get checked in. It was a bit of a walk from the train station to the hotel AND it turned out I hadn't read the check-in e-mail fully; I was supposed to let them know if we were arriving outside of certain hours so they could leave our keys in a box and send us a code. Thankfully, they were quick to respond to my query and the key was available - they just needed to share the code for the box with me. Also, we had to pull our luggage up these steps because there were NO RAMPS!

(Don't worry; no one died.)

Would you drink from this fountain?

We found it!!!

It was on a quiet residential street.

And yay - I got the keys!

They even had an elevator!

And look how cute the room was!

With all the crazy humidity and sweating, we were happy to find out that this room had air conditioning!

Still standing!

I thought the flooring in this place was really pretty.

My parents' room:

There was a tiny kitchen with a microwave and fridge. I would definitely stay here again!

We got my parents to their beds and settled!!!

Everyone needed rest at this point.

Greg and I needed to head out for some chow.

Grass on the roofs of some buildings.

(Corrupt) Soccer association:

Streetcar wires and towers:

Another train station in Zürich Enge. We came here because there were grocery stores still open!

Look at the pretty seats in the streetcar!

My Mom got a number of salads and enjoyed these cute sporks!

Greg and I also bought her some cheese. We found cute little cheese swirls!

My Dad had a nice sandwich:

Some sights from our walk:

Schule (school):

I made some little sandwiches when we got back and enjoyed my paprika lentil chips (the most delicious chips ever!)

I put in hummus, cucumbers, tomatoes:

Greg and I watched some TV - we found this silly sci-fi show (not available in English) about a group of people who have a time-travelling couch!

And then we packed up our luggage and went to bed because the next day we were heading home!

In the morning, we realized that our a/c had been leaking, so Greg cleaned it up and I informed the management.

Here is my breakfast from this morning:

This was a day it was helpful to have a raincoat with a hood!

It was drizzling outside.

We arrived at the bus station in the morning all ready to go.

Can you guess which track (Gleis) we needed?

Eek! There are those stairs again!

Flughafen = airport (literally flight haven)

I found my Mom a coffee and got myself some sparkling water.

We got some Swiss chocolate for my brother's family.

Tired but we made it!

Thank goodness for escalators!

"Links gehen

Rechts stehen"

A nice rhyme that means

"Walk on the left

Stand on the right"

Here's my outfit for this day. Perhaps floaty sleeves aren't the most practical for all the public bathrooms and travelling, but it's a light material and I was REALLY hot on the flight to Switzerland, so I wanted to be hopefully less hot on the way home.