Day 17: Zürich

Today was a rather relaxed day spent touring around more of Zürich, partially with Jackson until he had to leave for his evening work shift and partly solo.

In the morning we had a bit of sleep in, which was heavenly. We took the tram and then a bus about 30 minutes to get to the ETH campus that Jackson studies at. It was impeccably clean, modern, and well appointed with all things nerd. It had many cafes and student bars too – though, things weren’t very busy because it is the middle of final exam study period now.

We had a coffee at Jackson’s fave spot and then headed downtown. Mission: find a watch. This couldn’t possibly be too hard in Switzerland. I forgot to regale readers with the story of my shattered apple watch in a previous post. Really, the story is simple and tragic. I plugged my iWatch in to charge on a high ledge and, without proper placement, it fell off said ledge and the screen shattered into a million little pieces. This happened when I arrived at the camping place in France the day after my tire went flat… yea.

Anyways, I am quite sure I have Apple Care for the watch, but until I can take it into an Apple store to get it fixed I have been completely lost without a watch. I feel naked when I don’t wear one. Jackson and I successfully found me a Swatch watch that was reasonably priced, Swiss, and real pretty!

Ass Bar was our next stop (you may remember this from yesterday’s post). This is actually a very cool place as far as bars for ass go, as it collects unused food (i.e. food that isn’t sold) from other cafes and restaurants and sells it at reasonable prices in an effort to eliminate food waste. We took our Ass bar sandwiches and ate them by the river.

Once we made our way home, Jackson had to ready himself to head out for his job on the railroad and I just wanted to be comatose on his couch for a bit.

A late afternoon surge of energy (via Swiss chocolate washed down with chocolate milk) led me downtown to purchase more fine chocolate as a thank you gift for Jackson (and to replace most of his that I had eaten). I walked a few kilometres to the Industrial quarter, which is the trendy, hipster area in West Zürich. I found a really cool beer / cocktail garden with shops, bars, restaurants and outdoor seating. I sat and had a drink.

I didn’t have to walk far to find a great Italian restaurant for dinner, Rosso. I had the beef ragu rigatoni and a glass of chianti in the understated ex-warehouse now converted into the Rosso restaurant.

I made my way back to Jackson’s house and have prepped for finally getting back on the bike tomorrow – I will ride to Basel in the Northwest of Switzerland. I am really excited and, again, my Swiss chocolate laden body surely needs to get back in the saddle.

DOTD

No real live floofers were pet today. How sad.