Travel In Zurich
Travel Tips for Zurich
Shop at Coop or any other local grocer instead of eating out. You’ll regularly find $15 salads and $25 burgers at restaurants so grocers are key to budget travel meals.
Similar to my first point, stay in a hostel or a place with at least a microwave. Being able to cook at least microwave meals will save you tons of money for sightseeing and excursions.
Zürich is a major city, but the outdoor attractions are largely free and so much fun! Go swimming, hiking in the hills around town, or stroll through one of the many free gardens around town.
Many museums offer free or discounted days. Check their individual websites and take advantage like we did!
Airbnb experiences has many offers from locals that are free or cheap. You don’t need an Airbnb account to browse them, but you will need one to reserve a spot.
Our Travels In Zurich
The entire first month of our European travels was planned around the famous Tour du Mont Blanc hike. Then the universe said, “NOPE, not for you”. Unexpected construction, a closure of our route to the hike, and canceled bus tickets put us in a major bind. We had reservations all around Chamonix, France to hike the Tour after Italy, but now we could barely get into France at all from Modena! So the literal day before we had to leave with nowhere to go, we canceled almost everything in France and went somewhere entirely different – Zürich, Switzerland.
Zürich wasn’t our first choice. We almost ended up in Monaco just to say we’ve been to Monaco. Geneva was high on our list for relaxing lake days. Our friends voted that we should visit Paris so we explored options for that long train ride. Thankfully we decided not to and dodged that bed bug outbreak! We chose Zürich for three reasons: It was nearby, we planned to visit the city a bit later anyway, and Chandni has an old friend there, David. He’s really the MVP of our first time in Switzerland.
We were treated to spectacular alpine views of southern Switzerland as we took a train from Como to Lugano and then to Zürich.
The mountains, lakes, rivers, and meadows you see in books about Switzerland were the normal view. Our picturesque first train ride was only topped by David’s hospitality. Arriving by night to a place where you can’t read anything is never easy, but he made it easy. He and his girlfriend Jasmine set us up comfortably, introduced us to Swiss snackage, gave us some basic German words, and were so much fun to get to know. Five star hosts, would stay and hang over beers again!
We were really excited to start exploring Zürich because it wasn’t highly recommend for travel. Smaller Swiss towns get so much understandable attention that Zürich gets left behind. It really shouldn’t because while the city was wonderful to explore, the people impressed us even more! Everyone was incredibly courteous and set the humanity bar very high. On one of our first local bus rides, our conductor abruptly stopped the bus.
We thought something was wrong with it. She and a passenger got out to help a homeless man cross the street and help him to a bench. After making sure he was okay they both returned to the bus and we were on our way as if nothing had happened. Ask yourself if you could see the average American being as helpful or engaged with a struggling stranger. By the way, that was one of only two homeless people we saw after almost three weeks in Switzerland. A country like Switzerland with such a crazy high standard of living doing so well for their citizens sent us into conversation. Why can’t our home country help mitigate poverty in a similar way despite more wealth, more land, and lower costs of living? To be determined, but Zürich, you have mighty fine folks on your streets.
Despite almost everything being written in German, everyone seemingly spoke English. That made visiting museums, gardens, and restaurants very easy. Our free access day at the main art museum Kunsthaus Zürich was made even better by all artwork having an English audio guide. Seeing three of Monet’s water lily paintings up close made an art museum visit as great as it could be, and an art installation filled with thousands of lit orbs resonating to atmospheric music was mesmerizing.
The city’s free succulent garden (one of largest in the world) was blossoming and full of plant info QR coded into English. Even the cashiers at every corner grocery store spoke English making shopping for our meals as easy as running to HEB. Too many times we hear about people unsure of traveling due to a language barrier. If a country like Switzerland, where English is the fourth most printed language after German, French, and Italian, can make it easy for an English speaker to travel, you have nothing to worry about.
The only thing we didn’t find appealing about the city was the food.
That’s not necessarily only due to taste. Zürich doesn’t encourage you to eat out because you can’t find a meal cheaper than $25. While there is McDonald’s and maybe pizza at a cheaper price, those are hardly Swiss food. And what even counts as Swiss food? There’s fondue. Nothing like paying for a pot of delicious liquid cheese when you’re lactose intolerant. There’s a Zürich staple Zurcher Kalbsgeschnetzeltes (say that three times fast!) which is pork slices smothered in a mushroom ggravy. But Chandni is a vegetarian, and again, that’s almost a $30 dish. Different Swiss cheeses and chocolates were fun to try at local shops, but they hardly make a meal. Our best Swiss meal in Zürich was the last one with friends.
David and Jasmine prepared a raclette meal, where you heat raclette cheese on a small table top stove to the point of melting. You then scrape off the warm cheese and serve on top of or with potatoes, bread, and any kind of sauce and spice combos you’d like. They added a bottle of local Staatskellerei Zürich white wine. That was a perfect meal of food, friends, and fun. So while we went into Zürich excited to visit friends, we left feeling like we could comfortably live there. The city isn’t a tourist trap making it a much more genuine experience. The train and trolley system are extremely punctual. The people are amazingly caring. Poverty was almost nowhere to be found despite the very high cost of living. The way the city felt was welcoming, and that set the tone for the rest of our travels through Switzerland.
