Zurich

The weekend before spring break was our trip to Zurich, Switzerland. The first two things I noticed upon arrival in Switzerland were 1) it's hella expensive and 2) they have great drinking water. Seriously, a number ten at Burger King was like 17 Swiss Francs. Which is like $17.50 dollars. For a hamburger and fries. From Burger King! I still can't wrap my mind around it. I do like how they do breakfast there, though. They basically just give you a basket of bread with some jam and honey. It'll cost you your firstborn child, but it's worth it. Maybe the Swiss felt bad about everything in their country sending you spiraling into debt, because they provide clean, fresh water all around the city for free. Granted, it's coming out of decorative fountains and sometimes you have to do crazy acrobatic moves to drink it, but free is free. (I only ever saw tourists drinking it, though, so it's possible our tour guide was playing us.) After we arrived, we took a free walking tour of the city with Dario, and even though it was raining the whole time it was a very good tour. Zurich old town is pretty like every other European city I've been to so far, and they have a river so it was very scenic. That night we had some good pasta and spaghetti ice cream, which is just ice cream shaped like spaghetti with strawberry sauce instead of tomato. Later we tried out a pub crawl, which was pretty fun and I got to talk to people from London and a lot of other places. The next day was a lot nicer so we wandered around and found a playground and enjoyed being outside, then took a 45 minute train to the Rhine Falls, which is the largest waterfall in Europe. There is a castle perched on top of the waterfall and the whole thing was very beautiful and we took our time exploring. Switzerland also (kind of like Texas) couldn't make up its mind on what the weather was like, so on the train ride over it would alternate snowing and sunny at each stop. We had a little trouble getting back to Zurich after the falls and were temporarily stranded in some random Swiss town for a while, but we made it back in time for our flight and all was well.