It's Zurich Day!

Sunday, August 29, 2010
We were not overly ambitious to get up this morning and didn’t have much to see in Milan. We checked out by 10 and headed towards the train station and stopped for breakfast on the way. We took the subway to the cathedral and since we had our bags, took turns going in to see it. It was a really beautiful looking cathedral but since mass was happening we couldn’t go in to see much of it. The stained glass windows were quite beautiful though. We hung out in the square and then headed to the train station. We were off to Switzerland. Our train left from Milan around 1 and we were off to Zurich. We arrived to Zurich and were freezing! The temperature dropped dramatically while we were on the train. Everyone was wearing long pants and warm coats. It was pretty ridiculous. We walked to our hostel which was in the old town, and went right through the city festival that was going on. We knew it was happening from the booking of the hostel but it was neat to see. So we checked into our hostel and decided to go have a look and taste some local foods. First thing that we discovered is that Switzerland is really, really expensive. The prices are about twice as at home. Needless to say we will be living pretty cheaply in Switzerland. We took a look around and decided to get some local eats. There were live bands and beer tents etc. We grabbed some pitas with shish kabobs and racelette. It was really good! We hung out on the street for awhile and enjoyed the festival. We then thought we would go check out our rooftop patio and what we found was not exciting! We assumed it was a licensed bar and there would be people up there. It was an empty rooftop with no sign of life. We had to walk through a sketchy attic to get there too. Anyhow, we ended up chilling in the common room and deciding to head to bed early. We went up to the room and met our roommates. There were two German boys and one guy from Brazil. They were heading out and after chatting with them for awhile, they convinced us to go out with them. We headed back out into the old town and it was now barren. The whole festival had shut down and it was really quiet in the streets. We found a pub to go have a drink at but the bartender was quite unpleasant so we didn’t stay for more than one. In the meantime however, we learned some German. We can now count to ten in German! That may come in handy someday. Anyhow, after we left the pub, we looked for somewhere else to go and had no luck. We looked and looked and everything had closed, we assume it’s because it is Sunday night and most people would have to work in the morning. We then thought lets get a bottle of wine or something and just have a drink at the hostel. We found a kebab shop and they sell beer and wine but when we asked how much a bottle of wine was, we were told it was 45 swiss francs. Ha! That is equivalent to our dollar and it wasn’t even a good bottle of wine. There was no way we would be paying 45 dollars for a bottle of wine. That’s ridiculous! Instead we bought a beer each and headed back to the hostel and pretty much turned in for the night. We met our other roommate then too. He was also from Brazil and the guys were all pretty funny and we had a good night!