This year’s short city trip lead us to Switzerland to visit our awesome friends Simona and Filip, who first moved from Macedonia to Slovenia and then from Slovenia to Switzerland. And on top of it – it was their first wedding anniversary recently, so we were really excited to see them and their new home. Check out our post on Macedonia that was inspired by their last year’s big and beautiful event.

So, we used the Assumption Day holiday and gave ourselves a 4-day trip to Switzerland. You can fly to Zurich directly from Ljubljana, which is a relief. If you get the earliest flight in the morning you can be strolling (or biking) the streets of Zurich at 9 am already.

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Zurich

We landed in Zurich, took a train from the airport to Zurich HB and were in the city centre in the blink of an eye. Probably the smoothest travel day we’ve ever had.

PS: Parking at Ljubljana airport can be expensive, but if you look at the parking options closely, you’ll find an Adria airways parking lot, which is much cheaper than the Fraport parking lot, although a bit harder to find.

Anyways, after getting to Zurich HB and having a must-have pretzel, which was expensive like it was covered in gold, we left our luggage in the locker at the train station and we searched for the Züri rollt that is just across the street from Zurich HB. We deposited money and took our free bikes. Yp, this is Switzerland for you. The bikes are actually free if you don’t lose them somehow.

Biking in Zurich is really easy and lots of people do it, so no worries necessary there. We drove on the banks of Limar river on the Altstadt side, past the famous Grossmunster to photogenic Bürkliplatz with the amazing view of the Zurich Lake.

We returned to the station by biking on Bahnhof Strasse past the really expensive shops (Tiffanys etc.), turned to climb up to Lindenhof and returned the bikes after that because we got caught in rain repeatedly. People from Zurich didn’t seem to mind that much, but we were not prepared – no surprises there.

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If you ever come here you’ll soon realize that Zurich really is crazy-expensive – it’s not a myth (except if you are from Iceland – it’s probably cheap for you, aka time for some shopping), so we took time to explore the free sights the city has to offer. We went for a quick bite somewhere between Niederdorf and Altstadt (Chinese food ftw) and then strolled the streets to Zurich University.

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We had a quick look around the University and returned back down to Central Square with the Polybahn. All of this (and more) can easily be done in a day – we even found some time to buy and eat lots of chocolate.

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This itinerary will not give you the option to really take in the city wholeheartedly, but you’ll get a good first impression. We then took the awesomely reliable train from Zurich HB to Neuchatel to meet our friends. You can buy the tickets online.

Neuchatel

Neuchatel is a town in the French part of Switzerland, by the Lake Neuchatel (aka Lac de Neuchâtel). It is a very charming town and has a cool vibe, that only a city by the water can have in my opinion.

It is relaxed, alive (at least in the summer months) and full of the French language. Knowing a few words definitely helps as people don’t tend to speak much English. It’s a small town with a compact and beautiful city centre that you can walk around, but Neuchatel also has great public transport. First, we walked to Collegiale de Neuchatel with a beautiful park in front and with a nice view of the lake.

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We then had a big bowl of cheese fondue and realized two things –  we’re actually in Switzerland woohoo and also, cheese = love, no news there.

Our friends are living close to Chaumont funicular – you’ll soon realize that Switzerland loves its cheese, watches, pretzels, chocolate, and funiculars, being a perfect combo of Germany, France, and Italy, at least in my opinion. So the next day the funicular, which is awesomely steep, took us to the top of Chaumont, with the amazing views of the three-lakes region.

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You can get to a panoramic tower near the funicular (by paying 1 CHF – there is an exchange machine at the funicular station on top, but it only accepts coins. We were lucky that the Swiss people are extremely nice and a couple actually paid our admission – when does that ever happen at home?

We then decided that it would be a good idea to walk back to the city centre, which took us approximately 1,5h and as far as walks go it is nothing special, as you walk by the road all the time. It is good exercise though if you are into that sort of thing.

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Tired and sweaty, we wanted to end our exploration with a visit to Neuchatel Botanical Garden, but we took a wrong bus and somehow ended back to the city centre. But, plans are made to be broken, especially while travelling. In the end, we actually got pretty lucky, as in the evening there was a summer festival in the city – which means crowds, food stands and all in all excitement in the air.

Read more about our trip in the next blog post on Switzerland, coming up soon.

xoxo

PS: Thanks to our amazing hosts Simona and Filip for having us!! <3