Homeward bound

Travel day, uggh!  Long haul international flights are definitely not my favourite thing but it's a bit difficult to have a European holiday without one.  We had decided to get a shuttle back to zurich because for the six of us it actually worked out to be cheaper than going by train which would have entailed a bus trip to the central area in Livigno, another bus to Zernez where we would have had to catch a train and lugging all of our luggage on and off of buses and trains isn't a joke.  The route was the exact opposite of how we came and we went back over the pass just between Susch and Davos which was just beautiful and what we expecting in our minds eye Livigno to have been.

The car was very quiet for most of the drive and I was left sitting in the back with my camera and managed to take some half decent photographs on the way down from Davos to Zurich.

Arriving at the Bahnhof in Zurich we left our luggage in the left luggage lockers at 9 CHF per locker and we needed 6 of them and, of course, we needed CHF of which we had none.  Fortunately there was an automatic note to coin exchanger at the left luggage which unfortunately didn't work.  We eventually found another, working, one on the opposite side of the concourse.  By the end of the trip we all needed a comfort break which has got to go down as my most expensive pee ever.  2 EUR.

After that it was off to meet up with Andre and Nicki at Kronenhalle which is an upmarket Zurich restaurant and, delicious as the meal was, we were rather grateful that Andre picked up the tab.  I'm not putting the cost of the meal in the blog because it was just an embarrassingly large amount of money for a meal which may have been slightly better than the Butchers shop in Sandton, may have been.  The wine was however, superb. 

Aside from the cost of the meal, it was great to spend the afternoon in a foreign city with friends and to enjoy the wine, company and food.  For the wine record, we started with a Hudelot-Noëllat Vougeot 1er cru 2005 from Burgundy and then followed that with a Château Beychevelle (3ème grand cru classé 2006) from St Julien in Bordeaux which were both marvellous to drink - thanks Andre. We spent the afternoon wandering around the old town of Zurich and eventually met up with Kirsten and Carl and walked up Bahnhofstrasse marvelling at the watches which were just ridiculous in price.  Caron saw one blancpain skeleton watch for 26,900.00 CHF and it made what I at the time thought quite expensive for her new watch look decidedly cheap.

Once Andre and Nicki had taken their leave everyone needed a bite to eat so we went to McDonalds as the cheap option.  We had five hamburgers (Three normal, one with cheese and a vegetarian) and four medium sized packets of chips and a coffee which cost the princely sum of 90 CHF or about R1,350.00.

From there it was a short train trip out to the airport and the normal waiting around with me trying to finish my book so that I could give it back to Kirsten but I didn't quite make it.  The flight took off and I went to sleep almost immediately and woke up about 2 hours outside of Johannesburg which wasn't so bad actually.  So that is it, another holiday done and no broken bones or permanent injuries, just a few bruises and bumps for a rather enjoyable Christmas break.