Europe 2012: The Beginning & Zurich Day 1

In the fall of 2011 I had a MAJOR travel bug. I had previously traveled to Europe in 4th grade with my family and then again for an art and architecture tour in the summer of 2008. After having fully developed the travel bug in 2008, 3+ years of no international travel was eating me alive. I kept researching flights to Europe. I didn't really have any specific place that I was praying to go to except for somewhere on the continent. Luke had never been to Europe before so he was just excited about going and seeing anything. I looked at all the major airports for flight deals: Heathrow, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome. Nothing. I was irritated because I was looking at down times in the travel seasons. Right after Christmas/New Years. Why weren't there any great deals?!

Then.

BAM! 

Zurich, Switzerland.

Swiss Air.

We bought tickets in October with us leaving on New Years Eve 2011 and returning January 10th, 2012. It was round trip through Zurich. We ended up getting both of our tickets, plus taxes for less than $1,300!!! Now, if anyone has traveled in the past 5 years to Europe, especially from the West Coast, you know that is like crazy unheard of! The second I saw those tickets, I basically bought them before talking to Luke. Barely. I mean, I did talk to him. But he knew, I had decided. EUROPE HERE WE COME!!!

We decided to also purchase EuroRail tickets for our travel while in Europe. We created a loop of cities to stop in:

 Zurich - Paris - Strasbourg - Munich - Zurich

We had a blast and a nightmare finalizing what cities we wanted to go to and where we wanted to stay. Once you are in Europe, your possibilities are endless which makes it super fun and exciting but really overwhelming at the same time.

This is what our living room looked like the day before we left. Explosion of clothes. Travel is totally different in the summer months than in the winter months for obvious reasons. All your apparel is fluffier, thicker and takes up so much more space compared to summer type clothing. I had the giant suitcase on the right hand side of the picture and Luke had a carry on size. Men...I don't get it. That is just TOO small. :)

We flew from Portland to San Francisco and then SFO to Zurich. I honestly don't remember if we ate this meal in Portland or in SFO but it was our last "American" meal for 10 days.

The layover in San Fran was 4 hours long. It was brutal on the way there because we were so anxious and excited to get to Europe. It was brutal on the way home because we just wanted to be home. Luke and I were very excited when we saw our plane come in.

We took off on December 31st and a couple hours into our flight, we crossed a time zone and had champagne and chocolates brought to us to celebrate the New Year. It was definitely a NY's I won't forget. We landed around 5pm Zurich time on the 1st of January. We made our way to our hotel once we landed. We stayed at Easy Hotel Zurich which was very affordable, clean and simple. We knew our train was leaving for Paris the next morning around 6am so we didn't really care to have a more luxury hotel our first night. I would definitely stay at Easy Hotel again (they have multiple locations throughout Europe) when I need a clean and affordable place to lay my head at night. 

We napped for about an hour or two and then made our way out into the city. Having restaurants and stores close on holidays is very common in Europe so we knew our selection of places to go would be limited. We decided to cross the river and head toward the old town, Niederdorf. But before we actually went to the old town, our bus took us past the cosmopolitan street Bahnhofstrasse. This street is closed to motor vehicles except for the railcar. The picture below is on the Bahnhofstrasse and I was just in awe of all the hanging lights. We were so lucky to still see Zurich all lit up with their Christmas decorations (actually every city still had up their decor). I believe that Zurich has one of the biggest lighting displays in the world during Christmas. Streets upon streets have lights suspended from building to building just twinkling. Some actually have movement which is just magical. 

We continued over the river to the old town, Niederdorf. I took some pictures of the lights by the river but they turned out all blurry so no go on putting them on the blog. Niederdorf is pretty much how I imagined it. Cobblestone, skinny, windy streets that open into little squares. The streets are lined with little stores and restaurants and each square had its' own lit Christmas tree. AH-mazing!! Below is a picture of one of the streets in the old town. We also ended up getting a DELICIOUS meal from a street vendor. I quote Luke here "I know this sounds so cliche but this sandwich is probably the best sandwich I have ever had." Zurich for the win!! :) (Side note: Zurich is SO EXPENSIVE!!! Every restaurant easily started at like 25-30 Swiss Franc = 50-60 US dollars a person - hence we choose a street vendor). 

After eating and walking around a bit more, we decided to head back to our hotel, shower and call it a night. We had a super early morning ahead of us. Paris here we come!!!