Monday, July 02, 2007

02.07.07 Zurich, Switzerland

Hello again from Zurich!

I have a bit more time today, so I am going to start with Venice, and give you an update of what we did there...which was some master wandering! We're getting very good at that.
First of all, we were staying on the mainland, and Venice is actually an island type city out in the middle of the ocean.We took a shuttle bus from our campground to the city, got off, and started our adventure. We wandered through the serpentine streets and alleyways with the general destination of the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco. Venice is such a beautifully romantic, charming city. I absolutely love it. It really is just what you would imagine....as my uncle Mike said in an email to me the other day...it is definitly a city of wet streets!

We saw all the main sights, and then wandered back to a pizza place we had seen that morning for a fabulous slice of Italian pizza. Then we found a beautiful little street right on the grand canal that was in the shade where we sat for a long while (we had just taken a night train the night before and had a crazy kid from California in our compartment talking at us until 3 am. so we were sleepy) and we actually ended up sleeping on the streets of Venice for a while that afternoon! After a bit, we got up and....guess what? Wandered some more!

The next day in Venice was spent much in the same manner since we weren't leaving there until 8pm. We sat at a little cafe on the grand canal and at a delicious lunch of authentic Italian pasta, which I followed up with the best cappucino I have ever had! After that, we staked out a pillar in front of the train station (which was just across the canal from where we were at the cafe) and took turns sitting watching the backpacks, while one of us wandered. I've almost finished Slaughter-House Five now....fabulous book, btw.

I already wrote much about our day yesterday here in Zurich. It is so beautiful here....in a very different way than Venice was. We had a great time just wandering here though, too. Mostly everything was closed here yesterday, because it was Sunday....though we did find the coolest place EVER!!
We went to a place called Cabaret Voltaire, which is a cafe/cabaret/gallery, and the actual place where dadaism began!! It was pretty much the coolest place we found yesterday!

Today, we went on a very long walk, to see most of the historic places...mainly the churches of Zurich. Most of them here were originally Catholic, but were changed to protestent with Zwingli (the leader of the Swiss Reformation). One church here, which was my favorite, is called Frauenkirche. It was originally a convent, and now has stained glass windows in it by Marc Chagall.....they were so incredibly beautiful. I can hardly explain how amazing they are!

We also took a walk up and then back down the other side of the Bahnhofstrasse, which is the famous shopping street of Zurich. We saw about 3 or 4 H&M's there. Crazy! We also found a fabulous Swiss chocolate store!! It was beautiful! And delicious.

Now we're just here at another random internet cafe, taking some shelter from the rain that has been pouring down all day here. Tomorrow morning we leave for Amsterdam!

Missing you all, very much!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have decided that SLC is were all the extra heat from hell vents out. Damn it is hot. Thus I have being spending way too much time on the computer. Anyway since you are going to Amsterdam I think I have to recommend a coffee shop. I think the name is Arabix something like that it has a black crow on its sign.(they have hash milk shakes and I think the coolest atmosphere) it is right near dam square and the Barneys coffee shops are pretty cool too. Van gogh and rembrandt museums are pretty cool. Check out the anne frank muesum (I never did but I hear it is worth the money). HAVE AN AWESOME TIME! So jealous!