From the Rhône to the Rhine: Zürich arrival

From 2014 to 2018 our family made substantial progress towards exploring every part of Europe that we would ever want to visit. We had completed six major road trips covering more than two dozen countries as well as shorter explorations of Sicily and France's Loire Valley. In Western Europe our travel map showed respectable distributions of pins in Spain, Italy and southern France but there were some notable bare areas that offered up tempting itineraries. It seemed like we might accomplish our goal of covering the entire continent before Cleo finishes high school in 2030. In 2019 we took our summer trip to China and Japan and then COVID happened. A meticulously crafted planned trip to the Balkan Peninsula had to be postponed and in 2020 we didn't travel at all. We got back on the horse in 2021 but the logistics of European travel amid the fluctuating epidemic were foreboding and we chose to conquer the American Southwest instead. Our sole foray to Europe was a two week peregrination along the Ring Road of Iceland which was a fabulous experience in terms of adventure and natural phenomena but did little to slake our appetite for medieval villages and delicious breakfasts crafted from morning markets. By the summer of 2022 between the apparent weakening of the virus and our accumulated vaccinations we had lost most of our fear of COVID. At the same time restrictions in Europe were being rapidly lifted and even vaccination was being dropped as a requirement to enter most countries. It was the perfect time to resume our attack on the continent. I quickly ruled out the Balkan trip given the heavy toll the epidemic had taken on those countries and the excessive potential for disruption of our plans by another wave of COVID. The two highest priority itineraries I had created in Western Europe were a loop around northern Italy, Corsica, and Sardinia and a round trip between Amsterdam and Lyon. I was favoring the Italy trip as it had been five years since Sicily and just four since Bordeaux but I decided to leave it up to Mei Ling and she chose Amsterdam.

My original itinerary had us beginning in Amsterdam and then bearing south through Belgium, Luxembourg, and Burgundy to Lyon and then dipping into Switzerland for Geneva before heading back north through Alsace and then the German Rheinland, which would have taken about 30 to 32 days. Two factors resulted in some substantial changes. The first was that the success of our 34 day Iberian road trip in 2018 made me comfortable extending the length of the journey to 40 days. The second was that when I opened up Skyscanner I found that there were no direct flights between Miami and Amsterdam. If I wanted to avoid a connection we would have to fly into Frankfurt or Zürich. We've had enough issues with flight delays and near misses over the last few years to know that if there's any way to use direct flights we go for it. Frankfurt was close to the existing itinerary but for various reasons the timing didn't work with some events I wanted to synchronize with. Zürich hadn't been on the original itinerary but ultimately I decided to bulk up the Switzerland leg to eight days from two and threw in Lake Constance and Liechtenstein for good measure. It proved to be a very rewarding decision.

With at least Cleo and Ian being old enough to carry small backpacks we were able to cut back to one large suitcase, two small rollers, and three carry-on backpacks. By the time we'd figured that out I'd already paid online for two checked bags but I was hopeful we'd be able to get a credit for the baggage fee we didn't use. We had carefully weighed the large suitcase to be sure that it didn't exceed the 23 kg limit but somehow on their scale it was a couple pounds over and the desk agent made us remove items if we wanted to avoid an excess weight charge. He also cheerfully advised us that they had a new 8 kg limit for carry-on bags that we would be held to even though it hadn't existed when I bought the ticket. More frenzied redistribution ensued, and fortunately he wasn't watching closely enough to realize that we were removing items from carry-ons before they were weighed and then replacing them after the bags had been tagged. An hour-long delay on the tarmac due to weather validated our decision to only consider direct routes and we all slept for the majority of the red-eye without anxiety about making a connection upon arrival. The five hours I spent asleep was quite a shock to me as I'm normally completely unable to sleep on planes. Perhaps it was the neck pillow that Mei Ling brought for me although they haven't seemed to help in the past. When I awoke we were already over land and an hour later the flight path showed us over Switzerland. From the window I could see a gorgeous landscape with bright grassy clearings divided by dense, winding groves of trees and dotted with small towns. The contrast between the shades of green and the white roads connecting the towns was so vivid that I almost felt that I was looking at an animation. We landed uneventfully and we allowed all the poor souls late for their connections to deplane before we gathered our belongings and made our own departure.

Our rental was a Volvo XC60 SUV which had a decent amount of interior room but less trunk space than we've had on prior European road trips. If we had the usual two large suitcases we wouldn't have been able to fit them but somehow I was able to wedge the large suitcase, the two rollers, and two backpacks into the trunk. Cleo kept her own backpack in the back seat with her and we were good to go. I was too preoccupied to Google the XC60 which would have informed me that it was a mid-size rather than the full-size SUV I had reserved. On the bright side the XC60 had the advantage of a spectacular system of cameras which provided a simulation of an overhead view of the vehicle and surrounding objects as well as automatic braking when there was an imminent danger of collision. This likely prevented several minor dents considering the number of times I had to maneuver and park in extremely tight spaces over the course of the trip, and may also have saved us from much worse outcomes.

Even after the late arrival and the rental car pick-up it was too early to check in at our first Airbnb so we drove to Im Viadukt, a collection of retail businesses located within the arches of a soaring railway viaduct a little north of the city center. By far the largest of these was Markthalle Im Viadukt, an assortment of small gourmet food stores and restaurants selling everything from cheese to pasta to produce. We had a rather conventional meal at the restaurant at the back of the market hall which gave us our first introduction to the exorbitant cost of Swiss dining. Even with the dollar at multi-year highs vs the Swiss franc, entree prices at an average restaurant rivaled those at an upscale New York City eatery.

There were no affordable choices for accommodation in the center of Zürich with a parking space so we had chosen an Airbnb in the small suburb of Birmensdorf about a fifteen minute drive from the old town. We found it on a winding street of beautifully-landscaped houses with a rural vibe. Our two bedroom apartment occupied the lower floor of an oddly-shaped two-story house with a street level garage. We had three nights here to recover from jet lag and adapt to the European environment and we gratefully unloaded our bags and washed up before heading to the old town for the afternoon and evening.

Most tourists don't drive in Zürich, or anywhere in Switzerland for that matter, but having our own wheels was a prerequisite for our extensive itinerary in Europe. A couple of adjustments I had to make quickly to my driving were to hit the brake instead of the accelerator if a traffic light turned yellow as I approached, and to keep a close eye on lane markings to be sure I wasn't locking myself into a wrong turn. It was generally a difficult proposition to switch out of a turn lane to go straight ahead, or vice versa, at the last moment. Street parking near the old town, or Altstadt, is generally nonexistent and the parking garages are quite expensive so I did a little research which indicated our best option was a garage called Parking Jelmoli.

Zürich began its existence as a Roman settlement but there are few remnants of that early ancestor of the city we found ourselves in on a rather cloudy and chilly Thursday evening. When we emerged from the garage we found ourselves in an immaculate clean and rather modern area of the old town with wide cobblestoned streets lined with cafes and boutiques. At the end of Rennweg the famous clock of the Church of St. Peter reminded us that we were in a place that had been largely preserved from medieval and Renaissance times.

I didn't really have a planned route but I had a list of spots to check out and we decided to start with the closest first. We walked a block east to reach the foot of Lindenhof, a steep hill that was once the site of a Roman fort and is now topped by a gravel-filled public park with oversized chess boards, swings, and the numerous linden trees that gave the hill its name. Of course the main attraction is the spectacular view over the Limmat River, the twin belltowers of Zürich's landmark Grossmünster, and the stately historic buildings lining the Limmatquai on the east bank of the river.

We crossed the Limmat on the Rudolf Brun bridge, one of several spans that connect the old town with the Niederdorf area on the east bank. We found the Limmatquai itself to be a rather bland array of boutiques along a wide and busy avenue but pedestrian Niederdorfstrasse one block inland was a delight. Here there were countless restaurants of Swiss and other ethnicities offering copious outdoor seating under wide canopies as well as an assortment of bars and galleries. This had more of a classic European old town feel than the more heavily touristed Altstadt on the west bank. Niederdorf occupies a hill of its own and narrow cobblestoned streets snaked upward inviting exploration. We decided to leave that for another night and instead returned to Limmatquai to take the Polybahn, a short funicular that carries passengers up the hill to a wide terrace with views over the Altstadt that rival the panorama of Niederdorf seen from Lindenhof.

Having by now worked up an appetite we wandered back downhill to Niederdorfstrasse. There were some tempting ethnic restaurants but I felt that we should have Swiss food on our first night in the country. We stumbled across a crowded place called Swiss Chuchi which seemed touristy but had good reviews and decided to go for it. All the tables were full so they stuffed us into a little waiting room inside the restaurant and appeared to forget about us for a while until I ventured out and gently reminded them of our existence. We were then shown to a rather cramped booth where I had to suck in my stomach to squeeze through the gap between the tables. Chuchi had all the requisite Swiss standards including cheese fondue, raclette, and even fondue Bourguignonne, which my mother used to make for us at home when I was a kid. The raclette was a particularly fun dish for the kids who loved melting the cheese in the little pans and mixing it with the meat and vegetables they had grilled on the surface. For Mei Ling and myself the calorie-heavy meal wasn't an experience we planned on repeating so it was good to have experienced all the classic Swiss mountain village dishes in one go.

After dinner we braved an intermittent drizzle to explore Niederdorf a little further. One landmark I wanted to visit was Cabaret Voltaire, the nightclub that became the birthplace of the Dada artistic movement just over a century ago. The entry room was atmospherically decorated but empty when we visited. Upstairs there were a fair number of people mostly dressed in black sipping drinks and engaging in animated discussion. There wasn't much that evoked the riotous scenes of creativity depicted in paintings and narratives from the period.

Our internal clocks still read mid-afternoon so we probably could have kept going but between the rain and our tired feet we decided to call it a night. On our return to the garage I was pleased to discover that our four hour stay hadn't been as expensive as I feared. Once we arrived back at the Airbnb it was impossible to get Cleo and Ian to go to sleep although somehow Spenser nodded off right away. I allowed the older kids to watch TV knowing that it would be a difficult job getting them out of bed in the morning and eventually drifted off myself knowing that we still had a great deal to accomplish in two full days in Zürich.