Heavenly Switzerland Part III
Day XIX: A Day Trip to Zurich
We got ready for our last city in Swiss, Zurich. There wasn’t any direct train from Brienze to Zurich. We either could via Lucerne or Interlaken, Burn to Zurich. As we had been to Lucerne, I chose the route via Burn. Even this route was pretty especially till Burn.
We reached Zurich Central by noon. Accommodations in Europe were costly which was why at most of the places we booked either Airbnb or hostel. Well, in Zurich, It was a hostel. Zurich was well connected through multiple metro and tram lines. We reached our Hotel cum Hostel by metro. Luckily, we got an early check-in. We dropped our luggage and headed towards the Lindt chocolate museum.
We took a tram from a tram station near our hotel to an intermediate stop from where we had to catch the following bus. Despite having an ample amount of time between the tram and the bus, we missed it thanks to Google Maps. Also, in this part of the world, you had to rely on tech rather than local help as you won't find people on the street more often. We waited literally at the corner of the road for 30 minutes until the next bus came. The day I decided to visit Zurich, The Lidnt Chocolate Factory was top of my to-do list of Zurich. And Finally, I was there. Upon reaching, we ordered sandwiches for lunch and then began our audio tour.
The tour began when they explained the farming of coco a very interesting process but I was only interested in chocolate tasting :P. I was getting irritated because, after cocoa farming, we entered a room which explained the manufacturing of Lidnt chocolate.
I was getting impatient and skipped the remainder of the informal sessions and went to the chocolate-tasting area. Three huge tanks were serving White Cream, Brown ( Sweet ) Chocolate cream and Dark Chocolate cream. I picked up a spoon & after a few minutes of struggle, I found a way to pour the chocolate into it and had my first spoon of white chocolate inside the Lidnt Museum. Ummm! No chocolate could taste better than this :D I tasted at least 10 more spoons of just white cream chocolate before moving towards the brown one ;) Guess how many spoons of brown chocolates I might have had :D The answer was more than 10 :P When I reached the dark chocolate section, I realised the chocolates weren't good for my health so had only one Spoon of it ;) While going back to the white chocolate tank, I saw the embarrassment on Aayushi's face :P. But this was once in a lifetime moment so ignored it and had a few more spoons before moving to the next chocolate-tasting session.
There was a wending machine and when I put my hand under the sensor, After a few seconds I got served a piece of chocolate. Cool, wasn't it? Though I was irritated by the wait and discovered a bowl which was kept to hold all the chocolates that weren't caught by people. So, without wasting time, I tasted all 15 types of chocolates directly from the bowl. I observed few kids were irritated by the delay just like me. So I showed them the way ;)
In the Final session, where we could pick one wrapped chocolate from each jar. These were the round-shaped Lindt chocolates with which all of us were familiar. By the way, nowhere they had mentioned or written that you had to pick one so I grabbed as much as I could from each jar and put it into my pockets until I was told not to do so :P थोड़ी embarrassment तो हुई। लेकिन मैंने सोचा Lindt Chocolate का taste इस embarrassment से काफ़ी better है!" So picked a little less from the rest of the Jars ;)
We came out at 2:00 PM and rushed to Zurich Central to catch a train to Rhine Falls which was scheduled at 3:00 PM. Luckily this time, we didn't mess up and reached Rhine Falls on time. When I looked at the Rhine Fall, I could see a small hill in the middle of it and decided to go there. We inquired about it at the ticket counters and got to know that the last boat that had to come back from there would be at 5:00 PM and the entire tour should take 20 minutes. It was 4:15 PM so we bought a ticket and rushed towards the dock and boarded the next available boat. I had been to some of the famous waterfalls in India and abroad and this one certainly would be ranked amongst the best ones. The entire journey was memorable, and that small hike to the top of the hill was the cherry on the cake. more than the view, the feeling that I got when I was at the top of the hill was surreal.
We boarded another boat that took us to the opposite end of the river from where we climbed hundreds of steps to reach the Castle. Castle felt lifeless and ordinary to me. Though in the below pictures, it won't look that ordinary right?
We exited the castle from the other side of the gates and saw a route and started walking on it without knowing where it would take us. Well, it took us to the most scenic walks of the day :D. While crossing a bridge, we saw a backside view of Rhine Falls and it looked equally beautiful. With that, we completed a 360° journey of the Rhine Falls.
After climbing a hell lot of steps and walking a few miles, we became hungry. Luckily there we found a food stall and ordered french fries. While ordering food, I overheard some of his conversations with his staff and got a feeling that he wasn't just from India or Gujarat but he was from south Gujarat, my native. So I asked Where are you from? He replied Udavada, Gujarat. I was glad to meet someone from my native especially when I was 3000 kilometres away from it. Our further communication took place in our native language because he said "Valsad થી છો તો Gujarati બોલો ને. કાન ને સંભડવમા પણ સરુ લગે બાકી આ Dutch કે German ભાષા સંભડી ને કાન પાકી ગયા છે"
While returning, we boarded the wrong train :P But luckily, we reached the right station :P. We boarded the wrong train and got down at the next station. luckily it was one of the main stations near Zurich which was why we got a direct nonstop train to Zurich and reached Zurich around the same time :P
A friend of mine stayed in Zurich for 3 weeks during one of the onsite stays. So he recommended us to visit, Umbrella Alley! The place looked dull mostly because of the time of year we might be visiting.
It was time to have our last dinner in Swiss and we want it to be tasty so we went to an Indian restaurant. And again we found it was run by a Bangladeshi owner. I lost count of the Indian restaurants, we had been to across Europe that were using Indian names to get popularity and respect. The food was delicious though. we took a tram to Zurich central from where we took metro S4 and reached our hotel by 9:00 PM.
End of a beautiful Swiss leg of our Euro adventure. Apart from, Glacier Express & Paragliding, we did almost everything we wanted to do in Swiss.
It was time to visit the best country of Euro Adventure, Italy. Yeah! It was even better than Switzerland, Amsterdam or France. We started the journey from the romantic Venice and this is how we did it 👉 The Heaven for Lovers, Venice
