Spending 6 hours in Zürich

With less than a day to spend in Zürich, we were really pushed for time to explore the city. However, Zürich was the perfect place to spend only 6 hours in because not only was that enough time to explore the main parts of pristine and almost-too-clean city, it also meant not forking out a fortune for accommodation or extra meals in the notoriously expensive country of Switzerland!


As we weren't staying in Zürich for the night, we didn't have a hostel where we could drop our bags off at. We did our research though and like most places, Zürich Airport had left luggage services and we ended up renting a locker to share for the day so we could wander around without the weight of our backpacks weighing us down.

Our day in Zürich began with a bit of a rocky start. Buying train tickets was a struggle within itself but even when we finally arrived in the city centre, we were greeted with horrific weather. As soon as we stepped out of the train station, it began raining and then hailing down heavily. With only one umbrella between us and our precious cameras to protect, we were a little bit anxious to step out from under the roof protecting us. We only had less than a day to explore the city though so decided to suck it up and tackle the hail head on. As soon as we stepped out though, our umbrella flipped inside out and broke completely. Just our luck...


Limmat River
Limmat River
We spent our day exploring the city centre, staying in District 1. We began by wandering around the Altstadt (Old Town) and fell in love with the small shops and hidden streets. The narrow cobblestone streets just added to the old-world charm of Altstadt.

Niederdorf
Limmat River
Limmat River
Fraumünster
Fraumünster

We slowly wandered down Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping strip in Zürich, and that eventually led us to Lake Zürich (Zürisee). Luckily for us, the weather had cleared up while we were at the lake which made the views across the water even more beautiful than they would have been. I can only imagine how gorgeous that lake is during summer. 

The lake was crystal clear and really nice to walk around but we decided not to spend too much time there in case the weather decided to take a bad turn again (which it unfortunately did).


Zürisee (Lake Zürich)
Zürisee
Zürisee
Zürisee
Zürisee
Zürisee
The weather was rapidly changing all day. We would constantly look up at the sky and it would look completely different. At one moment, it would be completely grey and overcast but at the next, the skies would be completely blue and clear. I thought Melbourne's weather was bi polar...

At this point of the day, we felt that we had seen pretty much all of the city so decided to head back to the Altstadt to explore the Niederdorf area and walk along the Limmat some more while seeing the few sights left to see such as the Grossmünster church.


Limmat River
Grossmünster
Limmat River
Limmat River
Grossmünster
Münzplatz
Limmat River
For the second half of the day, we struggled to find a park called Lindenhof, taking various turns and doing multiple loops of Bahnhofstrasse. It was a park that we were really keen on seeing because we had heard about the beautiful views over Zürich that were visible from there. However, we couldn't seem to work out where it was on our paper map and without being able to find any free wifi, we couldn't Google Map it. I can't even imagine how people used to travel before the invention of smart phones...  

We finally came across some street signs pointing us to the right direction and our many hours spent trying to locate Lindenhof definitely paid off. The observation area gave us beautiful views of the city and over the Limmat River.


View from Lindenhof
View from Lindenhof
View from Lindenhof
View from Lindenhof
View from Lindenhof
View from Lindenhof
After being in the volatile Zürich weather all day, we decided to escape the rain, take a break and settle down in a small restaurant for a hot drink and to share a pizza. We had planned to not eat any meals at all during our time in Zürich because of how expensive everything in the city is but the pizza that the table next to us was sharing looked too good for us to pass up.

Surprisingly, the bill wasn't too high and we didn't end up emptying our wallets at the restaurant. This left us some money to buy more Swiss chocolate and we hit up two chocolate shops to stock up.

Münzplatz
Hot chocolate
Pizza
Swiss chocolate (left) and Swiss truffles (right)
The old cliche definitely remains true. Zürich is definitely one of the most expensive cities that I have been to and I don't doubt that it is one of the most expensive cities in the world. We forked out ridiculous amounts of Swiss Francs on quality Swiss chocolate and spent the day people watching, admiring the style, class and fashion of all of the locals that we walked by. Zürich is definitely one of the most attractive cities that I have been to in regards to locals. We both agreed that there was a lot of eye candy and that the people of Zürich were the most attractive bunch of locals that we had encountered during our travels to date.

We spent the majority of our day in Zürich running for cover when it started to rain. I definitely would have had a more enjoyable time if the weather was nicer but the city itself was beautiful and definitely somewhere I do not regret squeezing into my trip. Although 6 hours is not a long time to be spending in a city, I felt that it was enough time to see what I wanted in Zürich and don't think that staying the night would have been worth it at all. I honestly don't know what I would have done with more time iZürich and we even left the city early, opting to spend more time exploring the airport.

Visiting Zürich has only reaffirmed my love for chocolate... All I can say is that Swiss chocolate is deservingly famous. 

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