Swiss Roadie Trip Day 10 - Zurich

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We get up and walk to the station. We’re going to visit Zurich, which is 10 miles to the north.

I purchase 3 return tickets which are so expensive I wonder briefly if I’ve accidentally bought the train. The nice lady in the ticket office explains that she’s giving us tickets to Uetliberg because they’re the same price as Zurich and Uetliberg is a nice place to visit in the mountains.

We spend the morning in Zurich, walking along the river to the Fraumünster and over the bridge to the Grossmünster churches then visit the Kunsthaus. It’s a really good art gallery with lots of works by artists the old man has heard of.

The rest of my family are philistines; while I wander round enjoying the art, they sit on a bench checking their social media/playing candy crush.

Daughter no 2 wants to go to a restaurant for lunch. The old man moans about the price and insists on going to a supermarket and having a picnic by the river. Daughter no 2 says she wishes we were a normal family. She has a point – the old man buys chicken noodles which he proceeds to eat with his fingers, before washing his hands and face in a fountain.

We decide to take the nice lady’s advice and catch the train to Uetliberg; a mountain which rises 500m above Zurich. From the summit you get a great view of the city, Lake Zurich, and the mountains beyond.

We walk to an observation deck to take some photos. After refreshments, we decide to take the Planet Trail. It’s a walk through the solar system at a scale of a 1:1,000,000,000. This means we are walking at twice the speed of light and the sun the size of a spacehopper. We pass Mercury, Venus and Earth which are the size of pinheads. I lose interest at Mars and return to the station to wait for the other two whose attention lasts until Saturn.

We catch the train back to Horgen and spend the rest of the beautiful sunny evening at the Sportbad, swimming in the pool and relaxing by the side of the lake.

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