We flew into Zurich, then took a train, and then walked, to our tiny offbeat hotel. The rooms were clean and charming and we had a terrace with two chairs. It was fun to hang out there journaling in the evening and listen to the din from the restaurant below, when you couldn’t understand a word. A chronic eavesdropper, tuning into conversations everywhere I go, it never occurred to me how pleasant it would be to listen to convivial human cadence without getting any of the content. The second night, I painted the building opposite as I listened to no one speaking English.

After freshening up from our plane ride and leaving our luggage, we walked downhill to downtown Zurich, about twenty minutes away. We had dinner at Hiltl (the oldest vegetarian restaurant in the world) which serves buffet style by weight, and we ate out on the terrace. We liked our respective choices enough that we went to a different location of the same restaurant the second evening.

After dinner, we walked toward the lake and on the way, it was the clouds that captured me. I started a poem in my head…”I went to Zurich and saw a cloud”… By the time we got to the water, the clouds had tinged sunset colors and were glorious. Then we hiked back up the long hill to our lodgings, and slept well, to wake to our full day in Zurich.

We started the day at a restaurant (Conditoriei Schober) located in the delightfully cobbled, narrow, Neiderdorf district, which is known for the best hot chocolate in the city. And yes, it was delicious. James and I also split an omelette, and had our first Swiss croissants; our younger daughter had the Salmon Benedict shown below. We were fortified now to climb to the top of the Grossmüster tower, up a narrow, spiral, stone stair, and then a wood one, for a good view of the city.

After that we saw the Chagall windows in the church across the river, which was especially sweet for me, because my aunt had visited these windows when they were new. She had replicas of them framed in her dining room, so they felt familiar to me.

We walked around town, looking at jackknives with a bunch of Buddhist monks, bought macrons (from Sprungli  in the afternoon- our younger daughter’s are better) and had gelato lakeside in the evening, watched the swans, as well as the activity and colors all around.  All in all, it was a lovely, wandering, 17,000 step day. We are grateful to have had no problem with jet lag.