After an epic day of exploration on the Saturday, we had one day left. Not a whole day as we were due to fly home Sunday evening but enough of the day to see what was left in the city. First stop was the zoo as we also had discount due to our Zürich Pass. Instead of getting off at Bahnhofstrasse we got off at Universitätsspital and then proceeded to cross the road and wait for the number 5 bus to the zoo.It was absolutely freezing and I mean freezing. Once we managed to get our tickets using our Zürich Pass again, we headed in to try and navigate our way round the zoo. We must have visited zoos everywhere we’ve been however this zoo did have quite a few babies.
They had baby elephants and penguins to begin with. A lot of animals weren’t out due to the cold weather. There was still plenty to see though.
I’m not quite sure what happened when we entered the lion enclosure but there were two lionesses (I think) who were getting rather up close and personal as the beautiful male was in the next enclosure.
Admittedly it was all behind glad so the photos aren’t of the best quality I’m afraid. Next up we’re the bears and there were baby sun bears out to play!
They were happy roaming around waiting for their food as the keepers went in to feed them. Needless to say no sooner had they gone in, the bears were following them round.
Next it was on to the chimpanzee enclosure and there was a lovely silver back in there. They were extremely lively and inquisitive. I can sit and watch them for hours as they’re so interesting.
A few old orangutans were next door, one looking extremely old and then we found the seals.
One of the strangest parts was the ‘outback,’ section which housed wallabies, koalas, emus and more. Not that we could see much due to the weather in Zürich being very different to that in Australia.
We did manage to see an emu, some wallabies and as we went indoors there were two sleeping koalas. Satisfied we had seen every exhibit and all the animals that were out we exited the zoo and headed back to catch the tram to the FIFA World Cup Museum.
It was a beautiful stop to disembark at. We treated ourselves to a McDonald’s first then headed in. We could use our Zürich Pass here too! Not in McDonald’s but the museum 🤦🏽♀️.. It is a three story exhibit which covers the history of FIFA, champions, kits, players, as well as interactive exhibits too.
You can’t take bags into the exhibition so we had to pop the backpack into a locker. All the lockers have famous players from throughout the years. We then walked the wrong way through the exhibition and found ourselves in the conference room. Whoops. Anyway. We re-centred and continued.
The first floor we found ourselves on had all the shirts of the countries. More specifically the national shirts of the 211 associations of FIFA. They looked like a rainbow.
England won the World Cup in 1966 so we were featured on the wall of fame alongside France who won it last year. Albeit England did have another good run. The next room was confusing as it was only half a room with mirrors in the middle.
It had the stats of the 211 countries as well as the rules of the game. The next exhibit was based on those who’d won the World Cup.
They even had the Women’s FIFA World Cup as well as the FIFA World Cup trophy. The first World Cup trophy was awarded to Brazil in 1950 and they were allowed to keep it after their third win in 1970. However since 1974, it has returned to FIFA and the winners are given a gold replica.
They had signatures of those who won the World Cup through the years. As well as information on the countries who’d won each year.
As we looked down on the 211 members of FIFA, we were also greeted by the difference in stadiums over time. The last exhibition was all interactive, from different footballs, to colouring in a unique football top, to identifying the sounds at one of the matches.
I went to sign up for ‘football pinball’ without realising I actually had to play and kick the ball so we made a swift exit through the gift shop behind my name got called.
They has memorabilia on sale for £100s signed by the likes of Michael Owen, Pelé and Messi. Then it was back into the freezing cold.
We decided to walk back. It was only going to take us 20 minutes or so and we could stop at Starbucks again. On Sundays, everywhere is shut including supermarkets. It’s only really “touristy” places open such as the zoo and a few museums and places to eat.
We ended back at the Fraumünster with its stunning architecture and Chagall Windows in no time (after a delicious caramel mocha and hot chocolate with all the extras).
From here we found ourselves wandering streets we hadn’t thus far. We stumbled upon ‘Cabaret Voltaire,’ the birthplace of Dadaism. I remember watching this on ‘Travelman’ and they had to recite a few verses and get dunked under water on the rooftop. Thankfully neither happened for us bit it was still an iconic part of the city to see. Priding themselves on pre war avant- gard, the Dada movement holds a particular discontent with war, violence and nationalism.
There was still so much architecture to see here from the towering (ish) high rises to the quirkiness of the buildings themselves. One of the strangest things we saw were the adverts in the windows of the ‘newsagents.’
They were advertising pre rolled joints with a mixture of marijuana! We’ve been to Amsterdam before but I swear I haven’t seen this advertised! Needless to say the area around the ‘newsagents’ smelt intensely of marijuana.
We had a nice casual stroll back along the river and found ourselves in Bahnhofstrasse where we’d venture underneath to get lost again.
There were SO many sweet shops or chocolate shops should I say. They had massive slabs of chocolate with all different types of extras and as soon as you walked into the shop the smell was just amazing. One thing we hadn’t seen anywhere were the Lindt chocolate balls except for in a newsagent where they were extortionately priced. On the plus side, under the Bahnhofstrasse was a beautiful purple shower.
We got on the train to Uetilberg which would see us rise up and up and up, disembark the train and then walk up and up and up for a fantastic view of the city from higher than we’d seen before.
There was even a paraglider/hang-glider who was clearly getting the best views from his ‘sleeping bag’ attached to a parachute. It looked terrifying but I bet the views were phenomenal. On top of that it started to snow as we hiked up the mountain.
The views were beautiful from atop Uetilberg in which ever distance you looked. There was also another lookout tower to climb however we had literally run out of money just before we’d got here so admired the view from the ground floor.
None of the photos do the actual view justice. I mean in reality everything was much clearer and more distinct. That’s what you get with using just your iPhone camera I suppose. Still, not bad really!
As we walked down to the train station, the colours of the autumnal trees was just beautiful. Oranges, yellows and reds lined the path back down. There was even a specific ‘BMX track,’ that saw crazy people come flying down.
One of the appealing parts of this beautiful walk was that you could walk a relative distance through our solar system.
They had facts along the walk about the sun and the other planets within the solar system. The scale was 1 metre to 1 million kilometres so in theory we were travelling at twice the speed of light. It was quite interesting!
We arrived back at the Uetliberg station and began our decent back to Bahnhofstrasse and then got the tube back for one last time to the Ibis hotel to collect our luggage. Our tickets were out of date by literally 2 minutes so I sat there praying that an officer wouldn’t come in and kick us off. Thankfully they didn’t so we risked it again to get to the airport which took all of about three minutes. Zürich airport was beautiful and festive!
There were so many Christmas trees and lights hanging everywhere. It was beautiful. We wanted food so headed to the only restaurant we could see as we had a bit of time.
The Upperdeck bar and restaurant fed us well. The food was delicious. I’d fancied pasta all week and finally got some. On our way down after eating there was a guy sat at the piano playing ‘White Christmas,’ it was lovely.
After a few more shops to wander in and out of, mainly admiring the yummy looking chocolate, it was time to head to our gate and then home. Always the worst part of the holiday.
There was chocolate everywhere. The flight home didn’t take long at all and before we knew it, we were landing back at Luton for the 3 hour drive home.
At least it wouldn’t be long until our next adventure!!
Until next time…