Trip 40
Day 11
Our train from Münich’s Hbf leaves just before 9am, so we have to leave the hotel somewhat earlier than is our habit, to catch the bus to the UBahn station and then on to Hbf. Still overcast today, high clouds, some sun (!) and about 30°. The journey is about 3 1/2 hours with no changes in trains, but several stops.
The scenery along the way so far is a mixture of farmland, some with an apparent cover crop with a light dusting of frost, and forests; scattered small villages. In between breaks in the forest, I can see the Alps behind us in the distance, back in the direction of Münich and an occasional (a number of them actually) solar panel farm alongside the tracks.
As we come into Lindau and Bregenz, we can see the Bodensee off to our right. A huge lake, but not a boat in sight today.
Mountains off to the left, some with snow, tell us we’re in different geography. At 11:20, the train announcements say ”Welcome to Switzerland “. It’s a good thing our journey today ends in Zurich snd we don’t connect here, as the (fast) train is 20 er.. 30 minutes late. The weather has cleared and it’s blue skies and lots of sunshine, something we haven’t seen much of in this trip.
We ate a quick bite in the station before venturing out to buy tram tickets from the machine to get to the hotel. The station has its own Christmas market!
The tram was only three stops from the train station and then walking two blocks to our hotel. They’ve set up an array of Christmas trees outside the hotel , but they’re not yet lit , being a bit early in the day; we’ll check them out later. We started the check in, but had to wait as the prior guest had just checked out and the suite needed servicing, so we’ll wait in the bar. It’s worth the wait to get a nicer suite.
About 5:30 we left the hotel to walk along the shore of Lake Zürich towards the Christmas market (Züricher Weinachtsdorf) near the lakeshore, about a 20 minute walk for us. At two points along the lakeshore the swans were gathered together near the shore, but they lost interest in us when we didn’t have anything to feed them.
We’ve spent a few days in Zürich in past years and the lake is quite pretty. The Limat river runs through this section of town into the lake.
At the square across from the entrance to the Christmas market a red trolley had just pulled up and guess who the driver was? Santa! The Santa trolley takes a trolley full of young children. Santa stepped out to help his last group of children off and greet the next group. Parents were there of course to take photos as the children boarded.
The entrance to this market is across the street from the trolley stop. It’s fairly crowded, but doesn’t look as large as some markets we’ve seen.
It’s a chilly night and lots of people have their gluhwein. While there are stands with Christmas decorations and other items, there seem to be more stands with food and drink than other markets we’ve seen. There was still the ever present Käthe Wofhart (we did manage to visit).
One food treat we’d hoped to find in Prague, but didn’t see, were profiteroles – small pancakes with your choice of toppings. It’s hard to beat Nutella.
We reversed course after having our little profiteroles treat to go back towards the hotel.
Country count 4
City count 7
Total Christmas markets 15
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