The One Where We Begin Urban Hiking

We are back in Switzerland! We had a nice four weeks in the States. We spent time in Chicago and Lawrenceville, Illinois and Bloomington, Indiana. In addition, I took a side trip to visit friends in St. Louis and Tobi and I both went to southern California for his business trip, which also included a little rest and relaxation since the kids stayed in Bloomington with Grandma & Grandpa.

Now we're back home and gearing up for school and back to the "routine" of Swiss daily life. We decided that instead of always going out into nature to hike, we might like to get to know our city better. So we're focusing on urban hiking and hoping we can get familiar with the less-touristy aspects of Zurich.

The girls on the bus, ready for some urban hiking!

Amazing foodstuffs, everywhere you look.

Today we decided to go to Markthalle Im Viaduct. This is a year old indoor marketplace, open 6 days a week. There are individual foodstuffs shops in one large market. They've used the old viaduct for the city as the building and enclosed it - it's beautiful. I've been missing Whole Foods and Foodstuffs in Evanston as well as Schaefer's in Skokie for all my gourmet foodstuffs. This is a fantastic find! There's even an English foods shop, The British Cheese Centre, with amazing cheddars, English beers, meat pies, and the holy grail of my summer drink, Pimms No. 1. There are beautiful breads, fruits & vegetables, a butcher, and a fish counter. It also has a wine shop and a restaurant. There was even an ice cream shop. If you know our children, you know we also got ice cream.

Beautiful flowers at the florist

Swiss breads, why are you so delicious?

Charlie wanted to know why the blueberries were so huge!

OMG! Pimm's!!

The boys found the thing they liked most.

Caroline liked the mango ice cream the best.

We left the market and walked back toward Old Town. It was kind of a long walk, but the kids were troupers. We wandered through parks where the Petanque Club of Zurich was holding its picnic and tournament (of course, at first, we thought it was bocce because we'd never heard of Petanque - see the things you learn when you urban hike??). Then we made our way down along the river and watched the people who were swimming the river today as part of an organized swim (complete with floats that looked like rubber ducks - the kids loved this).

Zurich has great fountains all over the city - perfect for the hot weather.

Charlie loves to swing.

So does Caroline, as long as Grant's doing the pushing.

View of the river with the rubber duckie swimmers,

with the twin spires of Grossmunster in the distance.

We stopped in our favorite park (we don't even really know what the name is, but we call it the Thornbush Park) for the kids to play and to get cooled off in the fountain. Instead of seeing beauty in the natural, like we would on a nature hike, we see the beauty in buildings and parks. Like the beautiful row houses or the cobblestone streets of Old Town.

You can even find ruins, if you look closely enough.

I love the color of these shutters.

A favorite hill in Old Town, with St. Peter's behind it.

Finally, we made our way down the Bahnhofstrasse (kinda like Zurich's version of Rodeo Drive or Michigan Avenue), where I taught Caroline to identify important things not found in nature. Like Ferragamo (her pronunciation was perfect, thank you very much) or Chanel.

I can't understand why they wouldn't let us in.

At the end of the day Grant said, "I thought today might be boring, but it was actually a lot of fun." Sometimes it's surprising what treasures you'll find if you just search for them.

Cheers!

Tiffany