Day 25 - Strasbourg to Zurich

Jan 7th - Ah, our last full day of vacation. We think back to the beginning of the trip...way back in Innsbruck, Salzburg, Munich...boy that seems like a lifetime ago! Work seems even longer ago, so that is a good sign :)

We headed down to the breakfast room at the hotel and experienced probably our busiest breakfast of the trip (lots of people!), but definitely an impressive spread, we got our fill here! All set for heading back to the train station. Today we are headed back to where the trip started...back to Zurich.

Beer, sausage, potatoes...mmm!

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, it was a bit difficult finding a place to stay in Zurich - that because looking for hotels, average pricing was in the 300 - 400 Euro price range. It even seemed "normal" for hotel rooms to be well above that price range. But, I managed to find a place located on the outskirts of Zurich for 99 Euro, with a free shuttle to the airport...that'll work just fine. With our EuRail pass we can get from the train station to the airport & then pick up the shuttle, perfect! We got settled into the hotel and then hopped our way back on the shuttle to the airport and back to the train station which is a good starting point for exploring a bit of Zurich. It was a bit later in the day so we knew this would be a quick tour. After a morning & afternoon of travelling, finding the hotel and getting back to the center of the city... it was getting to be late in the day so first order of business was to find a bite to eat. Not far from the train station was a beer hall - Rheinfelder Bierhalle - smaller than some of the bierhalles we experienced in Germany, but had some decent beer & hearty menu for a fairly reasonable price - reasonable for Zurich anyway. We have come to realize everything in Zurich is expensive...Rob stated it well with a "it's like everything in Zurich is airport price"...he was so right about that.

After a fill at Rheinfelder, it was getting dark out, but we decided to take a walk down one side of the top of Lake Zurich through the old town , across the bridge & back up the newer part of the city back to the train station. It was definitely a chilly, windy night but we did enjoy the views of the city at night. We managed to find a good view of St. Peter's Church that has the largest clock face in Europe, 8.7 meters in diameter...even from a distance it looked huge.

Our last stop before heading back to the hotel was at a brasserie in the train station called The Federal - there was a large beer list here, but we opted to share a sampler of some of the on tap beers. Meh...was a little less than impressive - so we finished up & made our way back to the hotel for the night.

Nice looking sampler...contents less than impressive

New Beers for the day: Feldschlosschen Dark, Feldschlosschen Special, sampler @ the Federal...nothing good enough worth mentioning though, so won't bother listing here