What To Do In Zurich?

I can’t lie. We came to Zurich without really knowing anything about the city or what things we should do here. I think we were just both hoping to see a picturesque view of some mountains. When we got up the first thing I did was peer put the windows and saw another dark, dreary, wet looking day. That sure didn’t motivate us to want to walk around the city. We tossed around the idea of just packing it up and moving on, but after thinking about it, we decided to head to the tourist information center to find out what would be good to do on a crappy weather day. As we left our hotel I grabbed a free tourist guide book of the city and looked at it while we were walking. I happened to turn to the page that discussed side trips to do in the Autumn. Half of the page was dedicated to locations that have Thermal Baths & Waterparks. Now this peaked our interest. The tourist information center really helped us plan our day. We decided to take a 4 hour bus tour of Zurich that included a ride in a cable car to the top of one of their mini-mountains and a ferry ride across the lake. The tour gave us a pretty good overview of the area and a little bit about Switzerland. One thing that I learned was that Zurich is not the capitol city. I think both Tom and I thought it was, but it is actually the city of Bern. After the tour we used our Eurail Pass and hopped on the train to go to the nearby city of Baden to go to the Thermal Baths. The train leaves every half hour and we got there just in time to catch the train there without having to wait. We found the ThermalBaden (name of the place we were going) with no problems. For a small fee we were able to enjoy the indoor/outdoor pools that contained the hot spring water with the highest concentration of minerals in Switzerland. It was super relaxing and just what we needed to rejuvenate our muscles before the final leg of our journey. The pools had several different jets around the edge at different height levels to work all your different muscles. Every couple minutes a bell would ring and a light would flash which meant it was time to move to the next jet. Very neat! Leaving Baden we once again caught the train at the exact right time. This side trip was definitely meant to be. Once back in Zurich we headed to the Old Town to find a place to get some authentic Swiss food. The guy at the tourist information center told us about a nice restaurant that he recommended, so we went there. We walked in and it smelled really gross (like stinky feet), but was most likely the smell of melted Swiss cheese. The restaurant after all was a fondue restaurant. We didn’t have reservations and they couldn’t get us in so we left, actually happy to do so. It smelled so bad! We then decided to go to the Bierhalle Wolfe. This was more our style. There I had a traditional rosti dish (hash browns with ham, bacon, and melted Swiss cheese) and of course beer! Very yummy and to make it even more fun an Oom-pah band was playing. Kind of felt like we were at Germanfest. I loved it. So for not really knowing what to do or expect out of Zurich, I think it turned out ok. Oh and by the way, we did not see any snow capped mountains. Apparently you can see the Alps on a very clear day. That’s it for Zurich. Last stop . . . Rome!