Spring Break, Day 2 and 3

I'm skipping to most of day 2 since if you read my last post, I was in bed most of the day.  The other girls went out for the day exploring the little towns between Zurich and Ritcherswill while I recovered.  By the time they got home, we were all ready for dinner.  We found the other restaurant we were supposed to go to the night before where I ordered a Sprite to settle my stomach and tomato soup for a light dinner.  After dinner I was still feeling sick but not terrible so we called it yet another early night with plans to explore Zurich the next morning.

By the next morning I was feeling much better so we headed down to breakfast and filled ourselves to the brim with plans on skipping lunch and its expense.  While sitting at breakfast I was being blinded by light so I looked up only to find an old man with 2 teeth using a mirror to shine sunlight into my eyes.  He laughed and said he thought I needed a little more light in my life.  Welcome to hostel living.

We got ready and took the S-Bahn into Zurich and then from there we walked entirely uphill to the Zurich Zoo.  The zoo had a long line of parents and children outside but inside it was pretty spaced out.  All the animals were beautiful, well cared for, and barely in cages so they were basically out in the open.  THe penguins made crazy noises that I have never heard made by any animal before but were still adorable.  The monkies were extremely active by fighting and playing with each other and swinging around the cage.  The gorillas had a fresh baby that didn't even have any hair yet, being held by the mother.  The zoo was so cool since it had slides and parks all over for kids to play on.  We went by the bamboons which were ugly and saw them cleaning eachother and eating it.  One of them even took poop off of anothers butt and ate it, of course the kids had a field day with that.  Lastly, we went into the garden which was literally 90 degrees and pure humidity.

After leaving the zoo, we began walking to the Dolder.  On one of the back roads we just happened to see a man walking a camel on a leash.  Strange! We walked to the Dodler with the thought that we could walk around inside and take pictures but it was actually just a hotel and a restuarant.  Instead we sat on a near by park bench which overlooked the city.  We walked entirely downhill through the suburbs of Zurich to the botanical gardens.  The gardens werent anything too exciting but it was free so we walked around for a while and then sat on another bench overlooking the city.  We left the botanical gardens in search of the Chinese Gardens and a cove with a pretty view of Lake Zurich.

When we reached the water, we were greeted with swarms of people.  There were couples walking the promenade, children playing soccer and riding scooters and groups of young adults just lounging around talking.  Sadly, the Chinese Garden was closed since through the windowwe were able to see it and it was gorgeous!  We walked around instead and found the cove on the lake which had a dock so we sat on it talking for a while. As we were leaving we found a pond with cute stones making a walking path.  We also passed a guy just picking up random rocks on the shore and somehow using balance to stack one on top of another.  We also passed a guy set up doing magic and juggeling flaming batons while balancing on a free standing ladder.

We walked through the center of town to a place with a purple cow outside on display.  We ordered 2 pots of fondue (one traditional, one bacon) and garlic bread and wine.  The fondue was simply delicious and we finished every last piece of bread.  We walked back to the train station and have some time so we went exploring and ended up finding a chocolate store which we had been looking for.  I bought a little bar for myself and a little bunny for Nicole.  On the train ride back, Anna just happened to look at her hostel receipt and noticed that we only paid for 2 nights, not 3 nights.  We walked back to the hostel and we re immediately confronted by the reservation desk about why we hadn't returned our keys and why all of our things were still in the room.  Embarrassed by our mistake, we paid for another night, showered, and went to bed.  In the morning we got ready and had breakfast.  The timing seemed to be perfect until we realized that the trains left at 8:15 and 8:45 while it was currently 8:01. We booked it to the station and luckily the train hadn't left yet but we also hadn't bought our tickets.  We made a split second decision to jump on the train without tickets since if we had wasted time buying them, we would have missed it!  The whole train ride we sat with knots in our stomach until we saw a uniform climb the steps.  I just about fainted when I realized it was just a train cleaner.  As soon as we reached the central train station we ran out onto the platform and breathed a giant sign of relief!