Today was a travel day: our train left Lyon at 9:30 AM this morning, then we changed trains in Geneva, and then we arrived in Zurich at 3:00 PM. We then had a 25-minute ride on the tram to get dropped right next to our AirBnB, followed by some confusion as to how to actually get access to the flat, which cost us another 20 minutes. But, we got in, the flat is nice, and we got settled in (including a Lucy nap)....
After breakfast this morning, we took a tram down to the botanical gardens and spent a couple of hours wandering through them (the QR codes that were supposed to provide English translations did not work, so we were slowed by the need to use Google Translate). This included three greenhouse domes that we could walk through, which was pretty interesting. We then headed back towards the apartment to an area Benton had seen that had a lot of restaurants and had a pretty delicious meal at a Thai restaurant....
August 1st is National Swiss Day! Essentially, Switzerland’s version of the 4th of July, but acknowledging the formation of Switzerland in the 1300s by way of a 3-way pact rather than by a declaration that started a war. It’s only been a national holiday since 1994, but it’s definitely a day when businesses are closed and, since it was a Monday, people were enjoying a long weekend. We got our laundry messiness from yesterday sorted this morning, which meant we actually ran laundry and delayed our planned departure until it had run and we could pull it out and hang it to dry....
The consensus of everyone we’ve chatted with, as well as the internet, is that Lucerne is beautiful and has one of the prettiest lakes in the world (Lake Lucerne; let’s pause and hand it to the Swiss that, in our sample of 2, they have nailed it when aiding travelers in remembering, “What is the name of the big lake next to ?” Lake Lucerne is the big lake next to Lucerne, and Lake Zurich is the big lake next to Zurich)....
If you’re going to travel through Europe, you’re going to have to break some eggs. Or, maybe, occasionally, NOT break some eggs. We skipped the Benton-breakfast (we…had no eggs left and had opted not to replenish them yesterday) and went out for breakfast instead. We then stopped and did a little grocery shopping for lunch and some hygiene-type items before heading back to the apartment, where Benton drove into some thesis wrap-up work, Lucy dove into some work she needed to get done, and Tim headed out to check out the tower and playground that Benton and Lucy had stumbled across at dinner last night....
We departed Zurich for Flumserberg (near Walensee—a deep and blue lake) today. We needed to be out of our AirBnB by 10:00 AM, and Lucy’s flight wasn’t until 2:00 PM, so we headed out and took the tram down to Lake Zurich and hung out on a couple of benches enjoying the weather, people watching, and killing time for a bit. Tim suggested that Benton walk with Lucy to the train station to the airport while he watched Benton’s and his bags....
This was a “smaller hike” day (in prep for a larger hike tomorrow). We took a bus down the mountain and then a short train ride to Walendstadt. We had a short walk through town to the edge of the lake (Walensee), and we followed a trail up beside the lake and then back down to the lake’s edge for ~4.5 miles. There was a (rocky) beach there, where we stopped and swam in the lake for a bit (10’ from the edge of the water, the bottom just fell away to some indeterminate depth)....
The main planned activity for today was a hike that had some options to shorten or extend it. It was a super foggy morning when we headed out—taking a short bus ride up to Tannenboden and then hiking from there (along with various mountain bikers for various stretches; we learned to listen for them and then stand out of the way). That was a ~5-mile hike that was mostly uphill, but that had a few flat-ish sections until we reached Maschgenkamm....