So here we are. The last night of the trip. Packing up everything, getting ready for the 11-hour plane ride back to LA tomorrow afternoon. Coolest thing about this flight? We're going BACK IN TIIIME! Our plane leaves at 3PM from Zurich, then we fly for 11 hours and arrive at 4PM in LA. Whooooaaaa!!! Sweet. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep on this flight, so the jetlag isn't too gnarly...some Ambien might be in order to facilitate the process.
For our final day in Europe, my family spent a good amount of time hanging out in Lucerne, extending our time there as long as we could before the train to Zurich. I FINALLY found another place selling Doner Kebaps (a large sandwich made by stuffing a fresh roll full of gyros meat, onion, lettuce, and yogurt sauce...I've been jonesing for one of these ever since I had one at the Vienna farmer's market, exactly a week ago), and there was rejoicing in the streets as I stumbled through my order in a bizarre mix of English and German and came out righteously stuffed with delicious food.
My entire family was on the lookout for new watches while in Switzerland, because hey, Switzerland, so we spent an exorbitant amount of time over the past two days in the 4-story Disneyland of Extraordinarily Expensive Watches, Bucherer. Both of my sisters were able to come out of the experience with some pretty classy watches, and will now tell you exactly what time it is should you even have a stray temporally-themed thought.
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| This has become their new permanent sitting position. |
My mom found a nice bracelet-ey one, to go with the other Bucherer watch that she'd gotten on our last trip to Lucerne, 5 years ago (she was the one pushing for the shopping trip). My dad, in typical fashion, claimed that the Swiss Military watch that he'd gotten from Costco in California was perfectly fine, and looked on in horrified silence as the girls perused the high-priced selection. I found only one that I liked, seeing as I am ridiculously picky about both the style and cost of watches, but had my selection further limited to only the black-crodocile-ish leather strap since they don't make a metal link strap that will fit around my giant hands but still fit snugly to my awkwardly small wrists. It was still pretty nice, but I was unable to convince myself that I needed it and decided to go with a good old fashioned Swiss Army Knife as my major souvenir from the trip.
Our train to Zurich went much more smoothly than our previous trainrides, and with no one maimed or subject to foreign-court litigation, we managed to get all of our luggage into our hotel. Another train ride took us to the downtown area of Zurich, where we found a ridiculously good but unbelievably expensive vegetarian buffet.
So here's the deal with this place. It's called Hiltl, which I have next to no idea how to pronounce. The buffet is a glorious, varied, massive affair filled with an absurd variety of vegetarian dishes, mostly with a distinct Indian flare.
The setting is classy but casual, and the service is all incredibly friendly, plus there's free tap water! (If you've traveled in Europe for any amount of time, you realize that this makes this place like an oasis in the Sahara). Everything looks, tastes, and smells amazing.
The catch? You have to pay by weight.
GASP!
Well, let me qualify that. If you don't want to pay the ridiculously high price of 57.00 CHF (Swiss Franks) -- something like $70.00 -- to have the all-you-can-eat buffet, you have to fill up your plate, then weigh it. The scale then prints you a receipt with your price, which is calculated at 5.50 CHF per 100g, translating in 'Mrrcan as about $7 per quarter pound. As you can imagine, with a buffet this adds up VERY quickly. Here are the receipts for myself, Becky, and Jess. Can you guess whose is whose?
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| If you can't make that out, prices from left to right: CHF 19.15, 44.10, 30.45 |
WELL GUESS WHAT, YOU'RE WRONG!
Ha! Got you there! Mine is actually the 19.00 CHF one...the big 44.00 in the middle was rung up by none other than Ms. Becky Hummel, who made the biggest rookie mistake of weighed buffets: never get the rice. I attribute my low cost to the number of times I've eaten at the Whole Foods hot bar, where you pay $8 a pound for similar foods, so I'm used to gauging the weight. Yes I'm proud of myself. So I celebrated by eating a bunch of Becky's. It was only right.
After this, we took to the streets, wandering around to try to find a good place for a drink or a coffee. The rest of the night can be summed up as follows:
-There was a giant sculpture of a spider by the water.
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| The car got in the way, but Jess is stepping on it. |
-We had drinks at what I'm pretty sure was an outdoor Swiss gay bar.
-We tried to find a coffee shop, and ended up wandering deep into the "West Hollywood" section of Zurich.
-The whole family, walking as a group, passed through a group of obvious prostitutes standing on a street corner. Thank god my dad didn't try to ask them for directions.
-We spent about 1.5-2 hours wandering the less-seedy side of Zurich looking for a place with dessert, eventually walking in a giant loop around the train station and ending up in the same place we'd been an hour before. So we had dessert there. Seemed like a sign.
-We ran into about 6 separate bachelorette parties. I guess it's definitely wedding season.
-Apparently the park outside the history museum is the "cool hang out place" for all of Zurich's Goth subculture. Seems a tad odd.
-Final thought of the night: it's really hard to find a coffee shop in Zurich after 9PM. Who'd'a'thought?
As you can see, it was quite an eventful night. Now we're back at our hotel, packing up for the plane ride home tomorrow. I was quick, so I could post this. Hope you enjoyed that, I'll try to get one more out before we leave, but no guarantees...it'll probably be pretty gnarly in the morning!
Til next time, auf wedersehen!
