It was yet another early morning. The showers were interesting: as I mentioned earlier, we'd gotten tokens for hot water, and I was worried that 5 minutes would not be enough for me, but it was actually fine. I managed :) The weather was very nice - sunny and warm. We walked to the Friedhof bus stop and waited for the bus that would take us to the train station. We got on a train heading for Schaffhausen and got out at the Schloss Laufen stop, which is where the Rhine falls are situated. At first we followed the people that got out at the same stop, but they were heading towards the boats and we weren't sure that was the right way to go. So we turned back and started walking uphill, in the direction of the ticket office. We bought tickets that entitled us for a visit to the falls and a tour of the castle, they were 5€ each. I guess we walked through the castle when we were going towards the falls, although I'm not sure. There was also a youth hostel in the castle. We followed the "Adventure trail" down the hill, and there were several observation platforms along the way. The view just kept getting better. I'd never seen a proper waterfall before, so I was impressed. Here are some pictures, all of which are clickable:
We made our way down to the small harbor, and realized that separate tickets were needed to get to the cool observation platform smack in the middle of the falls. We thought about it and decided it'd be worth it. There were several route options, so we made our pick and got on the boat. It took us to the other side of the river, and we then had to change into a second boat. That took us to the observation tower-cliff thingy. The water was very cool - greenish turquoise and bubbly. Looked almost like mineral water. The current seemed to be pretty strong, but the boat handled it just fine. We got out and started climbing up the stairs to the very top of the cliff. It was very cool. I was a bit surprised that we didn't even get much water on us though :D Along with the Untersberg mountain, the Rhine falls have got to be my favorite experience of the trip. Also, the weather was just right. Now for some more pictures:
When we were getting back to the docks, we apparently sat on the bad side of the boat and water splashed on our backs. Iiishk. We eventually got back to the train station and got on a train to Winterthur, only then realizing that we would need to change trains to get to Zurich. It took a really long time to get to the main station of Zurich, because the S-Bahn that we took from Winterthur kept stopping everywhere. Finally, we arrived in Zurich and were shocked by how hot it was. The sun was shining, and there was barely any wind. Pinky got cranky pretty fast because she isn't a fan of the sun :P
Our first mission was to find some place to eat. We expected Zurich to be very expensive, so decided to just go to McDonald's and ordered 2 BigMacs, large fries and two milkshakes. Instead they gave us 2 BigMacs, 2 large fries and 2 frappés, because apparently they don't have milkshakes in Switzerland. I paid with my credit card and didn't really pay attention to how much it all cost. When we were eating we started converting the 27 CHF to euros, and it was only then that we realized how expensive Zurich really is: ~20€ for two people at McDonald's. Probably the most expensive burgers of our lives... A pretty cool thing about that McDonald's was their bathroom system. The receipt had a code on it, which opened the bathroom door. So basically you can't enter the bathroom unless you buy something, and keep the receipt.
We spent a couple of hours wandering around the old town of Zurich. Saw the three cathedrals: Grossmunster, Fraumunster and St Peter's. They were all a whole lot modest than all the churches in Austria, for example.
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| The Grossmunster |
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| The street leading to St Peter's Cathedral |
As I mentioned already, it was very hot, so we sat by the Limmat river and dipped our feet in it. The water was refreshingly cold. Unfortunately, we never made it to Lake Zurich. On our way back to the camping site we stocked up on groceries and the rest of the evening was uneventful.
-Brain
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