All packed up, we made the easy walk to the train station and got our tickets for Zurich HB. We bought a couple of rolls to eat on the train. People were very helpful to us except for one guy who slammed into my trailing suitcase with his shopping bag full of some kind of labels, maybe they were business cards, don’t know. He never looked back—it was weird. Anyway a bunch of them spilled all over the ground and Ken started picking them up. Another woman began to help and handed them to Ken and then she realized they weren’t ours and she became our friend for 5 minutes. It was a nice travel moment.
On the train, we were lucky it wasn’t crowded because Ken’s suitcase would only fit on the floor space between the 2 seats next to us. I listened to my music and watch the Switzerland show out the window. The ride was 46 minutes. We left at exactly 10:10 and arrived at 10:57. Swiss trains living up to their reputation.
We had walking directions to the hotel and after a moment and needing to ask someone where the starting street was, we found it easily. The Zurich Marriott is not particularly well located. It’s full of men in dark suits with a few tourists sprinkled in. We found out it would be an additional $50 to get internet in our room so we will just go down to the lobby to use it. They did, at least, upgrade our room for being silver elite Marriott members and so we have a really nice, “executive” room with a fantastic view toward Zurich.

The whole day was totally overcast and flat—hard to get any nice pictures. It kind of echoed our moods about being here.
We walked about 10 minutes from here to the Old Town area.
It’s a jumble of streets with over priced restaurants all over the place. And a bunch of franchises. It’s Switzerland’s mall. To be fair, there were some cute shops and many interesting fountains. But this city feels a lot grittier than lovely Lucerne. We saw a bunch of homeless people outside the train station and there’s more graffiti and it’s dirtier. A real city.
We decided to try this place for lunch and it was really good—down home Chinese food.

I was planning to use our credit card for the most part for the rest of the trip so I wouldn’t have to come home with any Swiss Francs but they don’t take cards at Lee’s Takeaway. I asked him about it right away and them about where was an ATM. he said there’s on about 2 blocks away. “You eat first and then I’ll show you where it is” and that’s how it went. Really nice guy. Really tasty food. But—we spent about $50 on 2 plates of chicken stir fry with rice and one bottle of water. Crazy!
We walked across the river to the big wide shopping street with all the designer shops

And then headed home. I took a nap; Ken read. We went back out for a short explore right before the soccer game at 6:00 was to start. There’s a park just across the river from the hotel.
I liked this view from the park:

We saw some people swimming in the river and this amazing guy tightrope walking diagonally from the bridge to the shore.

We also slaw some obvious drug deals—straight out of Breaking Bad.
I went back to the room and Ken followed me with 2 cans of cold beer which we drank as Germany beat France. We went downstairs after the game and a very nice guy at the desk showed us another neighborhood, on the map, a short walk away so we went over there and found an Italian restaurant for dinner. It wasn’t bad at all. I had a pretty plate of fried zucchini flowers with scallops and Ken had a pasta with merguez and vegetables.

We enjoyed sitting on the street watching the authentic action. Lots of people with Germany flags and shirts and big smiles. The Tunisian owner seemed to know everyone in the place as well as everyone who passed by, except us.
We walked back home just in time to catch the Brazil match.

I’d say it was a pretty good day!