Day 3: Zurich

We fell asleep pretty promptly around 7:30 last night, and slept soundly until around 4am. At this point I had issues sleeping, but opened up the window and listened to the birds, which put me back to sleep. There was a big rainstorm sometime after that, and then I stayed asleep until 8:30. That`s what I call a good long sleep!! We`re off to get ready to head off to the Swiss National Museum now!

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We went to the local Coop (grocery store) and found some breakfast (yogurt + muesli), and headed off to the National Museum. It was a bit confusing to figure out where we were supposed to enter the building, but we eventually figured out where the main desk was, and got our entrance tickets to the museum (free courtesy the Swiss Pass!!). Then we started to enter the exhibits, and a museum person got all upset at us and kept pointing up a staircase. So we decided to go up the staircase, and when we tried to turn left at the top, another person made a bunch of noise at us and pointed us the other way. At this point, we figured out that they wanted us to put our bag into a locker rather than carry it around the museum, so we did. The museum wasn`t terribly exciting, but had a good section on the history of Switzerland. Most of the exhibits were in only German and French, so we could only read the major captions (which were translated into English). We stayed there until around 1 o'clock, and then headed off to find some lunch.

We headed back to the local Coop to grab lunch (sandwich + chips + strawberries), and spent some time at the hostel decided what to do for the rest of the day. We were going to visit the Botanical Gardens, but upon researching it, found out that the greenhouses are closed for renovations until the end of 2012, and the outdoor exhibits don't open until May 12. So there was no point in going. Instead, we decided to proceed with our walking tour of old Zurich. We visited 3 churches, and wandered in amongst the old buildings. The first church we visited was the Grossmunster - as pictured below. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside the building, but it wasn't terribly ornate. The stained glass was pretty, but there wasn't a lot of it, and the interior was pretty plain. On the plus side, today happened to be the day that the organ students from the local university were playing the organ. The person that teaches organ at the university also plays organ at this church, so the students were being given an opportunity to play their pieces on a massive organ. That was pretty cool to hear :).

After checking out the interior of the church, we each paid 4fr to climb the tower. We went up 175 steps to the top, and were rewarded with an amazing view of the city! 

After climbing back down all 175 steps (it was very narrow, and fortunately only met someone going the other way at a point were there was enough room to step to the side), we continued on to St. Peterskirche. This church has the largest clock face in Europe (at 9 meters in diameter!), as pictured below (view from Grossmunster).

This church was a little strange to walk into - there was no one inside other than the organist practicing (even had a metronome going :p). So we sat and observed for a bit, Jeff snapped a quick picture, and then quitely headed out.

After exiting this church, we began heading towards the next church, weaving along random cobblestone streets. We came across a building that I think claimed Goethe visited?

We weren't allowed pictures inside the next church, the Fraumunster. The travel guides claim that Hildegard was an abbess here (but that doesn't make sense to me, since she was in Germany...). Anyway, there are quite a few stained glass windows that were done in the 1970s, and a mural on the wall that had been plastered over, copied, and re-plastered too many times, so they had a copy of it displayed overtop the original.

After being done with the churches, we went for a walk along the coast of Lake Zurich. I'm still amazed at how far along the season is here. The flowers are already in full bloom, and everything is green!

We decided to stop walking when we reached a park along the coast (we could have kept going, but our feet were starting to hurt...), so we sat down and checked our guidebooks to make sure we had done everything in town that we intended on doing. After a break, we started heading back, and came across more flowers:

We also noticed that they were using lilacs for hedges along the water... I wouldn't have noticed if my nose hadn't pointed out the familiar scent!!

We headed to the coop and bought some pasta and sauce and brought it back to the hostel to cook up. We had a lovely dinner with a couple guys (from Vancouver and Australia) that are travelling around Europe, and talked about food (peanut butter?), hostels, Switzerland, etc.

We plan on heading out for a bit more wandering before bed tonight, perhaps check out the nightlife around here. People seem to be eating dinner in the restaurant below our hostel, so I'm sure the street is bustling. We might even get some gelato from a place across the street.