#13. Rainy Day in Zürich

The day after our long hike we were definitely a little worn out, but our days in Switzerland were coming to a close, and we needed to see as much as we could!

We woke up to some rain clouds that had decided to make their way into the valley:

We had planned to visit Zürich the day that we arrived, but due to our exhaustion, we decided to wait until we were heading back there to pick up Jake's parents. So we dressed for the weather and were off!

When we arrived in the train station we immediately ran into this amazing farmer's market full of pastries, cheese, meats and other delicious treats! We observed them for a bit before heading out into the city, knowing we would be back at the station later in the day.

We then took a hike up a very intense hill (not another hike!) to a high point in the city called Lindenhof. It is the site of an old Roman castle that is now just used as an open space and great place to see the city from!

Zürich is divided in half by the Limmat River that flows from Zürichsee or Lake Zürich. After seeing the Limmat from Lindenhof, we walked back down and explored the rest of this bank. On this side there are also two famous churches. The first in this series is Fraumünster abbey, built in 853 A.D. Is that shocking to anyone else besides me? 853 A.D.! Anyways, Fraumünster abby had a lot of power back in the day, including collecting taxes, printing money and assigning the mayor of the city. The second church is Kirche St. Peter, built in 1230 A.D. This church is more famous because it actually is home to the largest clock-face in all of continental Europe. (Big Ben beats it out).

After exploring a little more of the narrow side-streets, we decided to cross over the Limmat to the other bank. On the way we grabbed a quick bite from this awesome food stand on the bridge. They were toasted sandwiches that were made on bread that can only be described as tasting like Dominoes Pizza dough. You know what I am talking about, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside and tasting like it is coated in butter. Yea, it was amazing. Mine also had tomato, mozzarella and basil.

Now needing to burn off a pound of melted butter and cheese, we headed over to explore one of the other famous churches in Zürich, Grossmünster built in 1220. Grossmünster was also a monastery that fought for notoriety against Fraumünster for many years. Grossmünster eventually won out because of a legend that Charlemagne's horse fell to its knees at the burial ground of Felix and Regula, Zürich's patron saints, and that is where the church was built. In any case, it is an amazing church and we decided to sneak inside for a peak. Sadly, I couldn't take any pictures inside, but we paid a little extra to travel up one of the spires and got to shoot some in there.

It had started to rain pretty hard at this point, so we figured it would be best to head back to the train station and make our way back to Hätzingen. While waiting for our train, we just had to buy these delicious treats while we waited:

I mean come on... I couldn't resist!

On our way back we stopped in Glarus for a quick peek. We had been through it a couple of times by car, but hadn't had time to experience the capital. We were racing the rain so it was a quick stop.

The rain met up with us, so we moved on back to Hätzingen. We were just in time for dinner with Karey's and Cyrill's parents to celebrate Kerry's birthday a little early. After an amazing meal (once again) and much drinking (once again) we decided that it would be great fun to play karekoe.. probably the most fun I had on the trip...

A close to another amazing day...