More Zurich

Downtown to Bellevue again to a sunny café, walk around the neighbourhood a bit. Heard what could have been an entire band, Bach’s 6^th Brandenberg Concerto, but it’s a fellow playing an accordian. Bruce recognised the piece, it’s played for organs. Not the usual accordian music for a fact! He is playing in a large alcove of the Wasserkirche – Water Church so the sound reverberates nicely and he’s very, very good. There are four churches, each have their own style, of course, the Water Church was originally only accessable by boat, land has been filled in to accommodate traffic, doesn’t seem to be a church anymore but a meeting hall.

Symbol on the side of a building, don't know the significance...

Then he moves onto a Mozart for violin piece.  We stayed for about half an hour to listen, paid him some money for the privilage it was, such a pleasure! Had a glass of wine/beer at a classy tourist hotel along the river. Then a long train ride home, a few delays and cranky kids.

We saw, Bruce counted seven paragliders, hangliders, parachuters? Great debate as to which they were. Colourful chutes in the air above us anyway, on the walk back to the house.

We took the “Trolly Experience” over Zurich for a couple of hours to see many parts we hadn’t yet. It seems from the commentary that they have razed many of the older buildings to make way for new ones in the Financial District. They also reclaimed some of the Lake Zurich to get more land. They don’t have a Rieselfeld area to build on. It was a nice trip, although we had already discovered the Bellevue neighbourhood and keep going back to the Alstadt, old town.

I was in desperate need of a haircut and while in that area, having more onion soup for Bruce, found a salon/bar – yes, the salon works during the day, they open it to drinkers and music from 1700 on until midnight. Glad we decided not to book into the hotel across the alley! So the young lady trained in Italy, spent some time in the Maldives and decided to come to Europe, to Zurich, where “people have money”. She said she is young and why not, good attitude. She asked me what I thought of the people here, I said they were more reserved than other places we’d been and she agreed wholeheartedly. She has been here for three months and not made a Swiss friend yet, and she’s a friendly person! Good cut I think, unusual method, but then I’ve never knowingly had a haircut from someone trained in Italy.

We explored by walking some to the lake, the market, Migros and found a store that sells lots of English language books – yippee – I was in heaven even though didn’t buy this time, sort of overwhelmed I guess, will go back though for sure! Books aren’t needed as urgently with using Kindle Reader but it is always nice to have a real book. Bruce had a good walking day so that was wonderful!

Went to a Lebanon restaurant Le Cedre, The Cedar, apparently a bible quotation from Solomon. My lack of bible knowledge is showing, Bruce knew. Great spicy food with take home. Bruce got a lemon/lime sorbet, his fav, and sat at the river watching the swans while I explored the artsy district. Hand made leather, jewellery, odds and sods – a purchasable museum of artwork, lovely!

While there we saw a TV fashion shoot, models behind a desk were posing as fashion models came out and explained their outfits. We were asked to be “in the crowd”. Frankly rather boring but interesting to see the very long boom and the large cameras used. 

We took a 45 minute train to a place called Rapperwil, “City of Roses”.

Entry to Church or Palace

It’s another old town south of Zurich, also on the lake. Had a Spanish tapas lunch. We do get around Europe in the way of food! They had a large flat pan of Paella, famous Spanish rice dish usually with seafood and chicken or whatever is available that day, outside which apparently they served from, spoons being in it. Many people stopped to look and said it by name but by the time we arrived it had had a few visits from flies and I wouldn’t touch it, call me picky.

The town was very pretty, roses pretty much over with, but a few still around, has a medieval castle up the hill, we didn’t go in but from the outside looked like a church to me.  

Back at the house more people came to stay in the downstairs flat, their first wedding anniversary, from London. We rode back into town with them their last day here and she’s a lawyer and he’s a Environmental building consultant to large business. To give you in, Canada, how close things are here, they take a twenty minute train ride to the Station, then another to the Airport, then an hour and half flight to London.  Now this likely means a whole day of travel but still, they’ll likely be home to have their Gin and Tonic by about four pm.

The main zipper on my purse broke, darn it, but it’s seen many kilometres so I suppose it was getting tired. If I were in Freiburg I know where to get an exact duplicate, not so in Zurich. As you probably know, I think “retail therapy” is for the birds, and it broke Friday, so shopping Saturday even more so. Urgent because I almost lost my prescription glasses on the train, having fallen out. Luckily Bruce doesn’t feel the need to put himself through it, parks himself on a bench and relaxes. No sense in us both becoming grumpy people, he took me for a glass of wine after, looks after me well. Long story, short, got one, not quite what I wanted, we’ll see. 

And now for something completely different – here’s Lexi at her sexiest. Eat your heart out Burt Reynolds! Okay, I’ll explain, the actor Burt Reynolds had this picture taken of him naked on a strategically placed skin rug years ago. 

Finally went to a WiFi café, the place with the great onion soup. Didn’t know it was WiFi but went for the soup and brought the computer into town to make sure of connection – somewhere. They don’t advertise WiFi in Zurich often, as they did in Lausanne. Even one place had a notice “ No we don’t have WiFi – Talk To Each Other!” Fitting unless you either have work to do or a blog to get out after a really long time.

At time of posting this we are actually in Basel, Switzerland.