Enjoying Zurich

 We were fooled by the weather forecast again today, so we stayed close to home. It was cloudy but there was no rain. From now on I will only trust the precipitation report from meteo.search.ch. They have been right a few weekends in a row now. The weather is starting to change. Notice the sweaters and changing leaves.

First we went to the Zurich Zoo, which completes the zoo tour. The elephants were being washed and fed. The girls loved the fact that the elephant was having a pedicure. And R noticed that one of the elephants was stretching as far as he could on his chain to steal food from his neighbor.

L got to pet an alpaca, and found a long slide - her favorite thing!

For S, this was the star of the day. We didn't see any lions at the other zoos (her picture).

Where do you think R is here? If you guessed at the monkey house, watching the monkeys then I'd like to know how you knew that the monkey house would have an easy chair and lamp. In fact, there were several.

After the zoo we went back downtown and took a walk by the river and had a picnic.

Then to the Swiss Landes Museum which had all sort of Swiss history things, including clothing, entire rooms removed from an old abbey, and some church panels depicting the three patron saints of Zurich. The patron saints were stereotypically Swiss. After being executed they still managed to get some work done. They all picked up their own heads and brought them over to their burial site. Below is the roof of the museum. R was impressed - she thought it looked like bead work. T was happy to see a playground behind the museum.

When we arrived in town in the morning a few platforms were being built in the train station. At four-o-clock all of this had been set up. There were viewing platforms, a bandstand and chairs, that huge wooden structure, and all of those trees. There were also little information stations, one of which had a bunch of pelts. As far as we could tell it was a propaganda event to encourage people to exploit all the resources of the forest. (Really!)

 We found out that an old favorite from Paris has a shop in town so we got some LaDuree macarons. For some reason we like them much better than the local version from Sprungli. Though we did find out that Sprungli seems to give away its little Luxemburgli macarons with a purchase. Until today when they asked us if we'd like Luxemburgli we said no.I thought it was a "would you like fries with that" situation.

And we went to the Globus department store food hall. I had heard so much about it, but I was not at all impressed. I had hoped for some nice prepared foods, but there wasn't anything I'd bother to buy. I was much more impressed with the Lowenstrasse Migros grocery store. It must have every thing Migros carries. Here is a portion of its chocolate section. Actually, Migros doesn't carry that much chocolate. Just its own brand and Frey. Coop city has more, I think. It also has Cailler, Lindt, and maybe Villars (which is cheaper in the US at Trader Joe's sold under their own label.)

 Here is another grocery shopping tip for you: Don't bother looking in the refrigerated section for a dozen eggs. You won't find them. Eggs are not refrigerated. So I guess no raw cookie dough until sometime next year. And they are not sold by the dozen. You can buy them only in packs of 4, 6, 9, or 10. Notice, too, that the eggs on the top shelf are colored. I think they are hard boiled, but I haven't wanted to try them.