Zurich, Switzerland

It is New Year’s Day and I wanted to treat my wife and daughter to something truly special this trip. I took them to one of the most popular Café in Zurich, Café Elena for Brunch.

As you can see the walls are covered in roses and this place was ridiculously expensive. We just had brunch and coffee (no alcohol), it was the most expensive meal I ever had in my life. I later found out the most restaurants in Switzerland are extremely expensive. So I just packing a picnic or bring a BBQ with you if you plan on visiting.

My daughter’s kinder breakfast came with everything she loved along with Kinder Egg on top… spoiled.

My wife and I shared this amazing breakfast tower with fruit on top, meats/cheeses in the middle and an assortment of yogurts, oatmeal, etc on the bottom with a basket of assorted breads.

With our bellies full and wallets a little lighter, it was time to explore Zurich!

Zurich has astronomical taxes, much like Germany. However, there are some benefits to include the very nice drinking fountains located all over the city.

The downtown area is like many European cities we have visited that was never originally designed for cars, but for horse traffic.

This is St. Peter’s church and was very beautiful, which was a theme in most the architecture we saw that day.

All of the Windows had individual carved statues. There must have been somewhere around 20 windows and every statue was completely unique.

This is called the Grossmünster church and was given the nick name of, “The Salt and Pepper dispensers” by German composer Richard Wagner.

The Limmat River can be found in the heart of Zurich with many residential housing residing alongside of it.

Here is another shot of St Peter’s cathedral from the river bank. Fun fact about the Swiss Guard, being a neutral country they only have their military deployed to one other country. They serve as protectors of the Vatican and the Pope.

Here is the famous Zurich Station made with marble pulled out of the Swiss Alps. Please check out the massive mall underneath the station, it’s easy to miss if you don’t go exploring.

Don’t let the architecture fool you, this is a museum designed to look like a castle. Still worth a visit thought and is located directly behind the station.

Thanks to Switzerland’s neutral status they are home to many banks and financial industries that keep or invest money for customers all over the world. There was a time (I forget what period) where they even had to offer negative interest rates, but money kept pouring in because the world economy was so bad that people would rather have lost some of their money instead of all of it.

Here is the FIFA Museum which includes some of the first FIFA trophies in its’ collection. The museum cost 130 Million Euros to build and since it was constructed right before the COVID outbreak, it has yet to re-coupe those cost.

DUCKS! A little odd to see them here as it was very cold.

This was a neat bird following the ducks around, not sure what it was. If you know what it is please let me know on X or Instagram.

Here is an overview of the city from one side of Lake Zurich.

On the other side of Lake Zurich, lies some of the Swiss Alps.

The first every financial institution in Zurich sold sea vessel insurance which is interesting, because Switzerland is a land locked country.

This stone wall marks the founding spot of Zurich.

The Schauspiel Haus was a safe haven for many Jewish actors/actresses during WWII. They came here to earn a living and escape Nazi rule/persecution.

We finished up our day trip with a nice cruise boat tour of the city on the Lake!

Great city, weird theater posters though. Ha Ha ^_^. If you vist, make sure to bring some food with you! The resturaunts will destroy your budget.