Zurich, Switzerland was our second stop in a six-day-journey-by-train from Barcelona to Berlin.
During our trip, we’ve stayed a couple of places that people have warned us would be quite expensive: Sweden, New Zealand, and Japan come to mind immediately. In all three of those countries, we were actually surprised by how (mostly) affordable we found them compared to the warnings. (Of course, we departed on our trip from the California Bay Area, so we have a somewhat skewed baseline.)
We’d been warned that Zurich was expensive too…
… and we found those warnings to be absolutely correct. As an example, meals in restaurants were at least three times more expensive than what we had been paying in Barcelona. Luckily, we were couchsurfing with a lovely family, so we didn’t have to face a Zurich hotel bill.
For two days, we just decided to accept expensive as our temporary norm. We had a fun time exploring and eating in this picturesque city during a festival that drew huge crowds to music stages, carnival rides, and giant trampolines. The two vegetarian restaurants we ate at were very good and very pricy. We also found a number of fun, free things to do, from splashing in the city’s many fountains to hanging out at a lovely, shaded playground.
