A Different Sense of Zurich
Trip Start
Dec 16, 2007
1
27
42
Trip End
Feb 24, 2008
Zurich,
Switzerland
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Our hotel in Zurich is the same one that I stayed at last time I was in town with Charles: the Etap Zurich West. It is just 1 S-bahn stop away from the HB (Hauptbahnhof) in an area undergoing regeneration, now labeled the "Technopark". The hotel lived up to expectations, proving to Belinda that not all Etaps are as bad as the one we stayed at in Koln.
Once settled in we headed out on the S-bahn to show Belinda a bit of the city
Paradeplatz
. From the HB we walked down the main shopping street, Bahnhofstrasse. Belinda of course had to check out the huge Swatch shop and a few department stores as we headed down. We also had to pop into our old friend Ronald's restaurant for some lunch since Belinda had some cravings.At the end of the street one is rewarded with views out over Lake Zurich, where the Limmat river joins it, having just flown through the centre of Zurich. One of the many cool trams whisked us up to Central, a large tram interchange across the river from the HB, where we enjoyed a ride up the hill on the Polybahn. This is the only of Zurich's hillside trains that I had yet to ride and it was a good experience, if not a little short. The view at the top was great but the setting sun prevented us from getting any photos over the central part of Zurich.
Back down by the river at Central we looked at some maps and decided to take tram #4 back to West Zurich. The tram doesn't go by the hotel, but through another street near the Technopark so we decided to give it a try since the S-bahn station was not the most enjoyable 5 minute walk along a busy street. Even though the tram took quite a bit longer to get out to our area the journey was enjoyable and the walk back to the hotel had significantly higher pedestrian amenity
Lake Zurich
. Instead of walking down a busy 6 lane road and under an elevated road we walked through the main part of the Technopark, which has been successfully converted from an old industrial area to a pedestrian priority zone.In the Etap it was time for another clean up before retracing our steps to the tram #4 stop. Riding the tram through to the opposite side of the city took about 25 minutes, bringing us to the Blindekuh (Blind Cow) restaurant. For the uninitiated the Blindekuh is a restaurant in the pitch black so that diners cannot see anything, just like blind people. The staff are blind, guiding diners to their seats and bringing the food and drink to the tables. This crazy dining experience had been gifted to me by Belinda for my birthday. We both had Osso Bucco for mains and chocolate cake for desert, we think that we ate it all. The food quality was great, whether eaten with cutlery, fingers or a mixture of both. It would've been great to see an infa red photo or video of us dining to see how ridiculous we looked. Something that floated my boat was seeing one of the cups that we had drunk our hot chocolate from in the reception; it was just as I had imagined from feeling it, right down to it being glass!
With no in hotel breakfast we decided against setting a wake up alarm, resulting in us getting up and eventually leaving quite late in the morning
Sexy Back
. Our 24 hour public transport tickets were still valid until the early afternoon so we hit the S bahn into the HB and there changed to a tram hading down Bahnhofstrasse. 3 quarters of the way down the street is Paradeplatz, where one can find many financial institutions and the Sprüngli cafe. For those who are unaware, the famous chocolate company that we all enjoy eating is actually Lindt & Sprüngli.As you may have guessed there was a lot of chocolate available for our brunch at the cafe and we both found it hard to resist. I had Appel Strudel with vanilla custard sauce (natürlich!) and a hot chocolate while Belinda had a chocolate coated chocolate ring cake and a Mocca. Even though there were more great chocolate products that wanted to be consumed by us our first round was quite filling and not cheap so we managed to exit the building before we could resist no longer.
Annoyed by the sun-ruined views from the previous afternoon we were setting out to try again on tram #9, crossing the Limmat right next to the lake before ascending the hill a bit to the Seilbahn. Unlike the common usage of this word being a cable car or gondola system this system is a funicular, which also makes sense as the direct translation of "seilbahn" is "cable [rail]way"
Crossing
.This was a similarly automated and constructed system to the Polybahn, but is longer and further from the centre of Zurich. The view was nevertheless great and this time the sun was not in the way. Back down at the bottom tram #10 ran us directly the rest of the way down the hill and across the Limmat to the HB. By this time our tickets were on the verge of expiring so it was time to purchase an extra 24 hours. This time we needed to travel into an extra zone to visit the Lindt factory outlet in Kilchberg.
New tickets in hand, we hopped aboard an S-bahn heading to Kilchberg and settled in for the journey. This was a shorter time than expected so we almost neglected to disembark from the announcement-less train when we did indeed arrive at the correct stop. From the station there were a few small signs leading us in the right direction. The Lindt factory itself is not open to the public normally but the outlet shop there is open most days.
After a 5 minute walk we entered the demure doors into a large shop filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with Lindt chocolate. It was always a certainty that we would not be leaving empty handed but the amount of out of season items and factory seconds discounts meant that we left with more goods than expected
Largest Clockface in Europe
. The amount of chocolate that we had necessitated a return to our hotel directly so we actually had some free hands amongst us. During this trip we passed many of Zurich's new Siemens-built S bahn EMU sets, but were unlucky in trying to get one to where we needed to go!From the Etap we made 1 last excursion out into Zurich for the day, walking through the Technopark area to the tram once more. It was a case of retracing our steps from the previous evening, except during daylight hours. Tram #4 took us back across town and we got off at the same stop but this time walked the opposite direction, toward the shore of the lake. Here, 1 block from the water one can find the Le Corbusier house, a truly stand-out building in this area. Surrounding it are traditional wooden-framed houses and then there it is, a concrete angular building surrounded by grass mounds. While I'm not a huge fan of the house's design I love how it contrasts with its surroundings.
By the time we had visited the house Belinda was feeling lke she wanted some lunch, even though it was 5pm. When the Migros and Coop shops near the house were unable to provide adequate food options we just took the tram back to the Technopak.
For dinner we investigated an Asian restaurant in the Technopark and despite it's ultra cool wooden self-openning doors we couldn't justify the 30 Francs for each main couse dish. We did discover a food court and small shopping area in an old warehouse (still with aeria crane) adjoining the restaurant and here there was a cool noodle joint. The prices were reasonable and the dishes were completely customisable and cooked fresh.
Blown away by our discovery of a great, reasonably priced noodle house, with generous servings, we returned to the hotel for our last night. The next day was going to be a big one but before resting we did a bit of blog work and research with 2 hours of purchased WiFi access.
