I've Got My Ticket for the Long Way 'Round, the One with the Prettiest of Views (Monday, August 10, 2015)

Sidney and Lyndon suggested the title of this post, because the train ride reminded them of a line from one of their favorite songs, the "Cups" song. It was bittersweet to leave Salzburg, but we were excited about boarding a train for a 5-hour train ride to Zurich through the Alps.   Jack and Hadley were fooling around with pretzel sticks.  I promise that they haven't picked up a smoking habit in Europe.

The scenery was so amazing that the 5 hours flew by.  The pictures don't do it justice, but I wanted to post a few anyway.  Lyndon took loads of scenery pictures with her camera, but I don't have a way to download them until we return home.  

We ordered lunch on the train, and my Diet Coke displayed my Dad's name.  Yay!

Dan's Diet Coke translated into "Coolest Dad," which he definitely deserves.  He has had the patience of a saint on this trip.  

Somewhere along the train ride, we passed through Liechtenstein.  It is an extremely small country (only 62 square miles) and the 2nd richest country in the world. We were excited about being able to add it to our list of countries.   

After arriving in Zurich, Switzerland, we took a cab to our hotel, as it was too far to walk with all of our luggage.  We got settled in the hotel rooms and then set out to explore a bit and have some dinner.  Lake Zurich was just a few blocks from the hotel. 

The kids also made friends with some swans that live on the lake.  One became very friendly with Jack. We didn't have any bread to offer, so we had to warn Jack to not let the swan too close to his fingers or he might get nipped.

As we crossed into the Old Town, we found a fountain for the kids to cool off a bit.  The Zurich Opera House is the building in the top center of the picture.  

We wandered around the Old Town, looking for dinner options.  We discovered some lovely views along the canal.

We also discovered that prices are astronomical in Zurich.  To put it in perspective, New York food prices in restaurants are about double that of Lexington.  London/Vienna/Salzburg food prices are a little higher than New York prices.  Zurich's food prices were at least double that of London/Vienna/Salzburg.  Yikes!  

After dinner, we walked through the high-end shopping district to get back to our hotel. It is always fun to see the window displays in big cities.  This window display was particularly creepy.

The mannequin faces were fashioned after famous movie stars, such as in Madame Tussauds wax museum, with one major difference.  The wax on the faces was not smoothed out.  They left it very lumpy, as if it had been  created by an elementary school student.  Really strange.  

As you can tell, Zurich is not really a sightseeing destination.  It is considered by many to be a pass-through city, as it is a major travel hub.  It was an odd city to us.  The German spoken there didn't sound similar to the German we heard in Austria.  Also, people around us seemed to lapse into English in the middle of conversations, when they had only been speaking German a few moments before.  The prices made it too expensive to want to visit for very long.  I am glad we stayed there overnight so that we could experience it, and it was a very pretty city.  I don't believe it will be on my list to return for a longer visit, however.  As my Dad says, " I don't believe I left anything there."  Next stop is Boston!