My Passport’s Travels

After yesterday, today was firmly a ‘no major plans’ day. We enjoyed sleeping in, finally stepping out into a rainy Tuesday morning around 10am. As we had missed breakfast at the hotel, our first order of business was coffee and food, in that order. Just a block down the street, w stumbled on a gem – Cafe Elena!

A very pink and frilly restaurant, with wonderful coffee and food. Mom and I both had macchiatos, although Mom was boring and had caramel while I had pink velvet (which actually was just a plain macchiato with coloring added to the milk – but it was fun because the espresso came in a separate little cup for me to add in!

Breakfast arrived and it was huge! If we had known, we would have just ordered one to share. Mom had the Sweet breakfast – she loved the Greek yogurt with it. I had the Home sweet home breakfast, which traded the yogurt and muesli for salami! The fruit was fresh and yummy – with some really unusual items thrown in: gooseberries, guava, and Isreal melon. It was a lovely way to start our lazy day.

Across the river was the Landesmuseum Zürich (State Museum of Zurich). (At night, we can see this building from our hotel room.) The tile work outside was beautiful!

They offered a nativity exhibit called Weihnachten & Krippen (Christmas and Cribs). It was lovely with nativities from around the world. Probably half were intricate paper nativities, but many other materials were used as well.

The Limmat River:

Next stop – the Polybahn!

It’s a short 1 1/2 minute ride up to the University of Zurich – but more importantly, some spectacular views!

I stopped at the little coffee cart before we headed back down.

We spent the afternoon strolling up Niederdorfstrasse. There were tons of interesting shops for window-shopping.

We stopped at a lovely little window bakery, where Mom had a Linzer cookie and I had an almond paste filled Lebkuchen. We thought we’d found a lovely church, but it turns out to be the city library!

Down the street, we found the hotel we had originally booked for our stay in Zurich (but decided against because of it’s distance from the bus station, where we had to be at 8am yesterday for our excursion, not because of Bessie on the balcony!)

We visited Grossmünster, one of the Reformed Church cathedrals. It was interesting – trying to be gothic, but then had modern stained glass. When we arrived, the organist was practicing on a beautiful organ! Loved the angels!

We continued down the street, enjoying the Christmas decoration – and laughing at the “Black Week Sales” many stores were advertising.

Eventually, we turned towards Limmatquai Street, which runs along the Limmat river and made our way back to our hotel for an afternoon break.

When we headed out later, we got this lovely view down the river. I especially liked the Christmas Star on the crane!

That’s our hotel, the building with three windows under the Campari sign.

For dinner, we were headed to The Singing Christmas Tree market on Werdmühleplaz.

We arrived just as the Lakeside School Künsnacht choir was taking the stage, uh, tree.

The kids were fantastic! They sang for almost a half hour – Christmas Calypso; Kling, Glöckchen, Kling; Santa Claus is Coming to Town; Stille Nacht; Feliz Navidad and more. The perfect way to kick off our evening!

We slipped away after several songs and started making our way through the market. This one is just a food market, we didn’t see any gifts available for purchase.

For dinner, we fulfilled one of my wish list items for this trip – Fondue in Switzerland! The market had a Fondue Chalet – a little building that seats about 75 and serves fondue.

We opted for the traditional cheese, although the goat cheese fondue was intriguing. We had our choice of potatoes or bread – and of course went the bread. The chalet was warm and comfortable – almost like a little hunting lodge with faux fur on the chairs, lots of candles and greenery.

After dinner, we were full – but still found room for fresh, made-to-order churros, with dulce de Leche to dip in. Which, by our vote, is the perfect dessert after fondue dinner while listening to Christmas music! The only thing that would have the evening any better would have been snow instead of the light rain!

On the way back to the room we stopped to place a Starbucks order (it’s two doors down from our hotel), but they weren’t accepting online orders anymore. We stopped in and learned the issue was actually my app! The US app doesn’t work in Switzerland. But they took my order with no issue! Coffee in hand, it was time to head back to the room for some games and packing – tomorrow, we’re on the move!