Still on the way to Barcelona

The second stop on the journey to Barcelona brought us to Zurich for a fourteen hour stop over. Special note to anyone travelling with one or more significant layovers before reaching your final destination - make sure you check the weather forecast so you can pack your carry-on appropriately. It was HOT in Zurich with temperatures reaching 40C. We arrived around 6:30am local time and after getting ourselves organized somewhat we head out to explore. We left our second carry on at the left luggage spot in the main train station which conveniently is located next to the airport. For $6 Euro we left our bag there. We purchased an all day transit pass for about $13 Euro each and this allowed us to take the train into downtown Zurich as well as allowed us to hop on and off the trams. The train ride into downtown was about 10 minutes. Zurich has an excellent transit system with an extensive tram network. It's also a good walking city.

We got to the downtown area and the first thing I noticed was how clean the city is. It was already quite warm and it wasn't even 9am local time yet. We started off by walking down the main pedestrian area. Z had a great Zurich city guide app he downloaded and it provided several different walking tour options. As we started out, none of the shops were open yet, but I noticed many of the stores in this particular area were higher end stores. We found a bakery called Sprungli which is famous for it's macaroons. We had no choice but to buy some and give them a try. And boy we were not disappointed, in fact wished we had purchased a few more than we did.

We walked around the Old Town and admired the beautiful buildings and streets and read about some of the history on the city guide app. We took a short boat ride on Lake Zurich which was included in our transit pass. We found a lovely spot for lunch where we enjoyed our meal outdoors on the patio. We found that a lot of the restaurants offer a menu of the day - which is a set menu including a limited choice for an appetizer, main course and drink (sometimes a dessert is also included). Ordering the menu of the day is a great way to go because you get all this food for a price that is much less than if you ordered each item individually. I got to practice my German a little here as well.

I was quite impressed with Zurich. It's a beautiful city, but we did find that in general it was rather expensive. The heat and lack of sleep was really starting to get to me, so we head back to the airport to wait out the rest of the stop over before our evening flight to Barcelona.