Day Three and our first overnight train. I was a little worried I’d get no sleep but actually it turned out not too bad. The night wasn’t smooth. At one point the train stopped. We switched carriages or engines, and there was a loud-ish bang through the train. (The boys slept through it). But this is still a great thing about our adventure across Europe – so many new things to experience. Have to remember the getting to the new places is part of the adventure too.
We took this adventure back in Summer 2023 but I didn’t get around to writing up the rest of it until now. Better late than never!
Day Three: Zürich
So, we have a plan. We arrive on the night train, we have the day in Zürich and we leave on the night train. Makes sense right? Well it didn’t quite go to plan. But we’ll start at the beginning.
We arrived in Zürich shortly after 9 am. Our first stop was the supermarket to get something for breakfast. We all run better with fuller tummies! There’s a co-op supermarket right outside the train station so that was helpful.
After having something to eat, we set off for our first stop of the day. With things in Switzerland being expensive, I looked for things that were cheap or free.
My boys love exploring by all sorts of different forms of transport. So traveling by bus, tram or metro all become part of the experience.
Our first stop of the day was to go up Uetliberg. Uetliberg is a mountain just outside of Zürich. The tourist board actually refer to it as being Zürich’s own mountain. You can read more about it here. The mountain gives an epic panoramic view across Zürich and Lake Zürich.
While writing this up, I looked back at the route recommended by Google Maps, and it’s telling me to take the S10 train from the station all the way to Uetliberg; however, we took a bus to Zürich Schweighof and then changed to the train. However, the tourism board website tells me there are engineering works taking place on sections of the S10 route, which might be why a different route was suggested when we were there.
When you take the train, it takes you to the station almost at the top. It’s a short walk from the station to the summit. I thought it might be something we could do but when we got there Chris had concerns about us doing it with the pushchair. So the boys spent some time playing in the playground which is right next door to the train station. Even at this point rather than the summit, the view is still pretty spectacular across the city.
After spending sometime in the park, it was time to head down again, so we took the train down again and then took the bus from Zürich Triemli back towards the city centre. On our way down I’d been looking at options for lunch and we figured we’d try the Migros Supermarket. Migros is another big brand of supermarkets in Switzerland and this one happened to have a cafe.
The cafe in this supermarket is a bunch of hot counters around the room where you can take your pick. Rather than a buffet where you pay one cost for as much as you can eat. At this one, you pick your bits and then you pay by weight when you get to the till. For the kids, there was a kids meal. You basically did the same but then you also get a juice and an ice cream. The lady on the till was really lovely. She didn’t really speak English so we had to wing it but worked it out in the end. She had asked did we speak Italian, well I learnt some in school but probably couldn’t use it now. But when I went back to ask about the ice cream for the boys, I figured I’d give it a go. It might not be perfect by any stretch but hopefully it would cross the language barrier a bit! It seemed to work even if it was terrible and I’m sure missing connecting words…
After lunch it was time to see more of the city. We started by taking the tram back to the city centre. Chris had found that Zürich has it’s own funicular railway – so that was the next stop. Of course we had to stop and take pictures on the bridge first.
This is from the bridge looking back towards the train station. This is the Swiss National Museum and then the other way there is a nice view along the river.
At this point, it had started to drizzle but was still really warm (as we had already experienced in Germany). The rain was nice given the heat though! We crossed the river to the lower stop of the Polybahn funicular. This goes from Central up to ETH Zürich, which was formerly called Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum. (For the nerds it has a 26% incline and is 450m in length. After leaving the bottom station, it goes over a bridge which crosses the road underneath it). We were managed to get the pushchair into the carriage. But it really wasn’t pushchair friendly if you couldn’t fold it up. (and therefore not wheelchair friendly)/. I’m not sure I could have done it myself if it had been just me and the boys.
To get around Zürich for the day, we had a 24 hour Zürich Card. This would cover our public transport but also give us discounts to some attractions like museums. The card was CHF 27 for Chris and I, CHF 19 for Jaxon and free for Rex (so £25 ish for an adult and £17 for Jaxon). The ages for children are between 6 and 16. It is possible to buy a 24 hour pass from ZVV but that is zone specific. Whereasa the Zürich Pass covers 7 zones around the city centre including getting from the city centre to the airport (Zürich Flughafen). There are also short lake cruises on Lake Zürich and Limmat River cruises included in the ticket price. The Rigiblick and Dolder Cable cars are also included but we didn’t make it to those (and actually they aren’t cable cars. Rigiblick is a funicular railway and Dolder is a rack railway).
We then took the bus from the top of the funicular to the Zürcher Spielzeugmuseum. This is a toy museum in the Altstetten area of the city. While we were on our way here, Rex had fallen asleep in his pushchair. There was normally a lift available at the museum. However, while we were there it was out of service so Chris and I carried Rex downstairs in his pushchair. He doesn’t have the biggest of pushchairs but even so it really wasn’t easy. It might have been better to leave him upstairs and then taken turns to keep an eye on him. It was interesting but some of it felt a bit like someone’s own collection rather than a museum. There were trains which Jaxon enjoyed but we were done in about 30 minutes maybe 45 minutes. We carried Rex back upstairs and while I sat outside with him, Chris and Jaxon looked around the toy shop. (With the Zürich Card, rather than a discount you get a voucher to use in store so they were spending the vouchers).
Then it was my turn. On the way back to the main station, I had found a yarn shop. We took the tram anD I left the boys watching the trams and the signals changing while I went to the yarn shop. (J’s special interest is how signals work and why they do what they do).
After the museum, we took a tram back to the main station. On the way we took a detour so I could visit a yarn shop while I was there. Jaxon, Rex and Chris watched the trams and the switches on the road.
The yarn shop I went to was called Marimar Strick Cafe – the lady in the shop was so lovely and friendly.
At this point, we rushed back to the station to find out what was happening. Chris had received a message to say that our train had been cancelled! It turned out that the villages that the line runs through had been hit by a bad storm overnight. This had left something like 30 villages without power.
We were told to come back when our train was “due” because then it would be officially be classed as cancelled and a solution could be organised. When we returned, the solution was a “hotel train”. Basically we’d be put on a sleeper train but we’d stay in the in the station. Then in the morning we’d take daytime trains for our onward journey. Well at least we didn’t have to fork out for a hotel in Zurich for the night!
We had a bunk bed room, Jaxon and Rex were on the bottom bunks and Chris and I were on the top bunks. This was fine apart from when Jaxon had to get up to pee in the night! When we first got onboard it was so warm that I had to go and get more water. It was nice to have some time to myself but the station was so empty it was kind of weird.
While the bunk bed wasn’t the comfiest – at least it was stationary so we could all get some sleep.
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You can find out more about the Interrail pass here.
