One day in Zurich makes a jetlagged person stumble

Leaving Darwin for Singapore......

In Singapore. this is a glass topped pool. Hard to photograph.

 So, here we are. We've arrived on the continent. Zurich airport is much like any other, except, like Singapore there are trains to take you to one place to the next - in this case to where we picked up our luggage. 

Having collected all four pieces we headed over to customs. There wasn't any. What there was was the clear bright sky, pavement and directions to the train station. A few false starts later and we were aboard the train to the Zurich town centre, where we wasted some time because we couldn't find lockers to put suitcases in, and then we couldn't work out how it worked. How it worked was that you paid for 6 hours and when we returned 10 hours later, we paid for 3 more hours. hmmm. In any case, The train station is reminiscent of Sydney Central station, except that 7am in Zurich is crowded with people, and we when returned at 6 pm, there's about 10 times as many people as in the morning. I shudder to think of what it must be like at 5 pm on a Friday. 

We strolled the streets for a while and discovered needing to pay to pee. Then we found Starbucks, which apart from overpriced coffee, it did have a free loo, and free charging stations for our devices which hadn't charged on the flight from Singapore. So approx. $50 later, 4 cups of liquid between us and one croissant, we were recharged enough to wander the city. 

We booked a hop on hop off bus, except we didn't hop off it until we were the last passengers and it returned to the station. 

There was some sort of street fair being set up so we wandered this and discovered it was a bike expo. Mostly for kids, and for e bikers. We walked and walked.  Saw some fabulous looking ducks, and some people doing drugs on the path. 

 Then we decided to check out the museum. Seriously wished we'd come here first because this place is magnificent. It's sited in an old castle and the rooms are connected and not connected in as much of a haphazard way as you can possibly manage. We lost each other many times. 

The displays are fabulous, informative with just the right amount of high tech versus low tech displays. I was very polite to the young woman standing in the corner watching the people at the display. When I returned to the room later I saw she was still there, and later I was surprised that she still hadn't been relieved of her post. I went over to chat and to my surprise realised that silicon models don't need to have coffee breaks. I mentioned it to Bruce, and he hadn't realised she wasn't real either. On closer examination you still feel she might start talking. There was a great family area part of which consisted of a mock up train with countryside streaming past the windows. It was very well done but somewhat disorientating to my already jetlagged brain.  I have a video of it which I will try to upload. 

There's a lot of cheese for sale in Europe. 

After the museum, we were very tired and had done 21000 steps. We headed over the to train station two hours early because we needed somewhere to sit down. That sounds easier than it was, as all seats were concrete, and mostly occupied. Unless you bought more overpriced coffee. Finally we settled for a Burger and chips from Burger King  for the bargain price of 17 Euros- about $30. Bruce and I have matching tattoos of the experience.

Bruce minded the luggage while Selah and I checked out a trade show in the railway station. We played with VR headsets, went on a treasure hunt to score free ice-cream, got a couple of Toblerone, some free face cream and generally made a nuisance of ourselves. And then I discovered our train had arrived. Hallelujah! Clambered aboard, found our room that had beds, the horizontal kid, and lay down. You have no idea how good that felt. 

3 horizontal beds one above the other, a sink, a window  and that's about all. For the next 12 hours the train thundered through the night and we were pretty much oblivious to it all. We woke between 4 and 5 to discover the gorgeousness of the Slovenian country side . A new day awaits!