June
2008
Zurich! (Day 15)0
Our 6am wake-up call the morning of Day Fifteen pulled us out of warm beds to face a cold and gray-misty world. By 7:25 we were finished with breakfast and waiting for the bus to Chur. Luckily our connecting train came to the track early and we were the sooner rescued from the cold and damp. As we left Chur at 8:15, the sky was looking a bit more hopeful – brighter despite the cloud cover. …At 9am, as we approached Ziegelbrücke station, the rain and fog prevailed. …Twenty minutes later, beyond Pfäffikon SZ station, the sky lightened and scattered sun won out over the rain. …And then as we reached Zurich a half hour after that, the rain was falling again. So it goes.
(The Zurich train station is home to people even taller than Andi)
After a quick stop at the tourism office for maps, we found our way to the Tram stop and caught the number 13 (I told you it wasn’t an unlucky number) to the Four Points Sihlcity Hotel (a Sheraton/Starwood property).
The Four Points Sihlcity is an interesting place. The hallways are extra-wide because the building was originally a paper plant and the carts that moved the paper were big. The rooms are compact, with the furniture and amenities tucked in very neatly. (I appreciated the aesthetics, especially the sleek modern style
of dark woods paired with chrome and jewel-toned patterned fabrics, but I felt like some of the double-occupancy rooms really only had space for one person, unless the pair was traveling very light and were very close).
The Sihlcity does have the most complete and amazing spa I have seen in any hotel, anywhere. The Asia Spa is run by an outside company, inside the hotel. It has a full complement of exercise equipment, from banks of treadmills, elliptical trainers, bikes, and weight machines to balancing stations and rope stations. The ropes can be adjusted at different levels of resistance, and are pulled by the hands or ankles to increase the benefits of stretches and motions from aerobic routines to Tai Chi. The equipment room has a juice bar, and the level below has a room with comfortable seating and a full range of beverage service along with fresh fruit and small snacks. There are massage rooms, saunas, and pools. It’s all very elegant and lush.
The hotel also has a few conference rooms of different sizes – to best suit the needs of everything from intimate business meetings to conferences with beverages and refreshments, to formal sit-down lunches and dinners.
Rounding out the major points of interest are the hotel bar and restaurant – both sleek, though the bar felt a bit dressier than the restaurant, as if the former was designed for business suits and the later for business-casual. (Our guide, Alexia, finished the tour with tea and coffee in the bar, and the presentation was beautiful. Each order came on an individual tray, with milk and multicolored packets of sugar and bites of chocolate. We chatted with her about our experiences so far, and learned about her experiences in school and working at different hotels around the world.)
After our tour, we strolled to a nearby park and ate lunch next to the (fast-flowing) river. Then we continued to the Swiss National Museum. It’s really big, and to see everything would probably take at least a day. It gives every impression of having once been a palace (built and later expanded), but this is a calculated effect. In fact, the building has always been a museum, and was designed to be an example of historical Swiss architecture at its best. Gustav Gull was commissioned to design the structure in 1892, and he produced a composite with a tower, a copy of the city gate at Baden, some gothic touches, fragments of actual monastery walkways, a great hall with 14 bay windows, more towers, more wings, granite, limestone, volcanic limestone and sandstone. (whew.)
The newest exhibit is about Family, and what it means to people today and from the past in various places. Interesting topic, but a bit difficult to fully appreciate as not all of the text was provided in English (some sections were just the standard German/French/Italian).
I wish I could have taken a picture of a table on display in another section. Its top was very intricately inlaid wood of several different colors, showing a geometrical pattern with words around the edges. The table was commissioned by a Zurich councilor, Felix Schneeberger, and his wife, Catherina von Schönau. Translated, the words were “Those who enjoy casting aspersions on others in their absence are not welcome at this table”. At the time, it was fashionable to have intricately inlaid tables as a sign of wealth and status – Scheeberger and Schonau just didn’t like the equally fashionable pastime of gossip.
Originally, the idea had been to take a quick visit at the museum and then spend some time shopping in Zurich, but we hadn’t planned on the crowds of the World Cup. By the time we left the museum, what had been a fairly uncrowded city was looking more and more like Times Square during a tourist rush. Rather than wade through the masses of people, we opted for an earlier return train to Chur, and the less crowded streets and shops nearer to SSTH.
