Rapperswil
September 6, 2018 in Switzerland ⋅ 🌧 18 °C
I started the day early as I was awake at 4:30am. It meant I was up and going by 9am as I had to go back tpthe mobile phone shop. My SIM card hadn’t kicked in. No idea what the guy did but he got it going.
I then walked down Bahnhofstrasse. It’s the shopping street of Zurich. By the time I got to the end the shops were all very high end - Burberry, Hermes, Cartier, Bvlgari.
I was heading down to Lake Zurich and if I didn’t use Bahnhofstrasse I would have been walking parallel to it.
I had planned to do a round trip on the Lake but overhearing a tour guide talking to her group I decided to get off at Rapperswil. The boat trip was very scenic. Rather than a tour with a commentary it was more like a commuter trip. My ticket was just an all day/all zones public transport ticket.
Rapperswil is at the other end of the Lake/the beginning of the upper Lake.
There were a lot of Italian restaurants there but I did manage to find a Swiss one.
After lunch I walked up to the castle. It is now actually a Polish museum celebrating both Poles in Switzerland and Swiss in Poland. I don’t actually know that much about the history of Poland but am interested in finding out more after today.
The castle itself is gorgeous. I was able to go all the way up into the tower.
By the time I made it into Rapperswil I was rather tired. I came back to Zurich via train.
The receptionist was able to recommend and reserve a table at a fondue restaurant. It was a short walk away and very delicious. Even though my portion was smaller than that for a couple it couldn’t have been only half the amount. I watched several couples scrape the bottom of the fondue pot. I had the traditional version with wine and kirsch.
I did discover I was doing it wrong though. I would use the long fork to dip the bread in the fondu and then transfer it to my dinner fork. Everyone else was eating from the long fork which didn’t seem very hygienic to me.
After I finished I walked down to the river for a gentle stroll back to the hotel. It’s a beautiful night, very summer like.Read more
I bet you went to bed early, since waking up so early and all that walking. 😀Photos are lovely, Rapperville looks very pretty and a fair distance away from hotel. Do the people speak English and did you like the fondue.
I was asleep by 10pm but awake at 5:30am. I’ve only found one person in Zurich who didn’t speak English, he was the tech guy at the phone store but I didn’t need to deal with him. All the restaurants seem to have both English and German menus. In Rapperswil the English wasn’t quite as prevalent. The place I had my lunch had an English translation on the menu but not on the lunch specials board. The waitress translated it for me but she did struggle a little bit. The receptionist at the hotel yesterday apologised to a couple checking in saying “ my Spanish isn’t very good. French or English?” He obviously understood some of what they were saying. I have iTranslate on my phone and that helps most of the tine if I can’t work it out from the context. The fondue was very very good. Definitely worth it and (for Zurich) not too expensive.