Trip Summary: Switzerland

Posted 2026-07-26

This late May my family and I traveled to Switzerland for the first time. This is my memoir on it.

Some pictures here might just be out of my phone or my camera’s JPEG preview, i.e they might look like crap. Full post-processed images will slowly make their way unto my photography website.

Day 0, Flight Day

First day of traveling is always exciting, and this was no different. First things though, driving to the airport that is 2-3 hours away. Exciting! After dropping off my family at the airport, I went to an off-site parking, “Purchase Park 2 Fly”, to drop off the car and take the shuttle back to reconvene. As a foreshadow on the parking, it was ok, nothing exciting happened to the car (and that’s a good thing). The shuttle to/from the airport was also fine. After checking in, going through TSA, and waiting for our flight that departed at ~17:00, it was flight time to Dublin with a 3 hour layover! Fun!

When we booked the flight, a direct flight was almost double the cost of a layover flight. We chose a 3 hour layover going to Swiss and 4 hours back both in order to not miss the second flight, and because that was one of the cheaper ones available.

Landing at Dublin at 4:00am and trying to stay awake for the second flight to Swiss, we were directed to Gate E, which required a shuttle from the main gates area to this departure only area.

While trying to do something for the 3-2 hours we needed to wait, I bought my eSIM for Swiss. We went with a DigitalRepublic eSIM as it was pretty cheap. We are talking 10$CHF for unlimited data for a month at 10MBps. Other eSIM services had plans such as 30$CHF for 20Gb or something like that, but DR was unbeatable. In order to get a Swiss eSIM, due to regulations I needed to present an ID and a face scan, which I did so over the web with some ID checking service I do not remember what was called. While normally it’s supposed to activate after 5 minutes, mine did not. Seems my face was too pretty for the auto-checking system :)

With that settled though and awaiting confirmation on my eSIM, next up was our secondary flight to Swiss at 7am. This was a short 2 hour flight, the seats were OK. There was no entertainment screen on the plane, but expected for a short European flight I suppose.

Landing at Zurich Airport, a shuttle took us from the plane to the airport where we waited for customs. This was sort of long, I think 30-45min of wait time. This was with the “expedited” line if one has a biometric passport, ones with a logo on the bottom-center. We almost were going to be told to back to the start of the line when we arrived at the customs personnel, as we are supposed to have the passport scanned and fingerprint given at a kiosk machine before joining the line. We almost missed this as it wasn’t obvious with the signs around, until a personnel came around and was asking people if they did.

Finally out of immigration, it was officially off to the start to the trip. First step is to get to Wengen. Back during planning the trip, I deduced that the SBB Half-Pass was the better option than the full pass, given what we would be doing. In some locations the full pass only acted like a half pass, mainly in the Jungfrau area we would be staying at for 3 days, so that would be mute there. The half-pass costed 150$CHF each at the SBB store at the airport, but it did end up paying for itself throughout the trip.

After navigating and understanding the train and timeline we should be taking, we took the train out of the airport to Zurich HB, where we would be transferring to a train that took us to Interlaken, and from there another train to Wengen. The train was wonderful and clean. On the longer ride from Zurich to Interlaken, we sat at the second floor of the train, something SBB trains have even for second class carts. The train ride included some wonderful views of Swiss. Most notable was the Interlaken west lake, which was actually blue/green similar to pictures taken, but in real life! I don’t think I ever say a lake this bright and vivid.

After landing at Interlaken, we went to the Jungfrau tourist shop thing and purchased a 3 day Jungfrau pass. Given this is where we would be staying for the next 3 days including today, I calculated during the trip planning that this was going to be worth it. Plus it gives flexibility to take any train and cable car any time without worry for how often we do so.

From here it was two trains left, one to Lauterbrunnen, with a transfer to another train to Wengen. The train up to Lauterbrunnen, a stop before Wengen, was fun for the first time. The view transitioned from a somewhat flat area to going in between two mountains. The second train to Wengen from Lauterbrunnen was steep. So steep our luggage kept on going backwards; I had to apply a decent amount of force to keep them from sliding back. This is also my first time seeing a cogwheel train: a train with basically gears in the middle and on the tracks for better traction.

After arriving at Wengen station, we had to walk for 10 minutes to our first hotel, Alpenruhe Wengen. Something we did not realize when planning for the trip was how steep the city was and how much we would be walking. Did I mention that we were more than 24 hours awake with partially sleep? Yeah we were tired. The fact we had to carry the luggage up-hill didn’t help. As a future note writing this, the hotel does offer a shuttle from the station to the hotel. Unfortunately we didn’t have cellular service nor a VoIP to make that call, neither did we realize this was an option.

Arriving at the hotel, tired and sweaty, it was a wonderful small hotel. Checking in, the hotel receptionist gave us a physical key as the door key with a heavy weight attached. This would be the first hotel where an actual classic key was given for the door (emphasis on how the receptionist said it in a french accent).

After dropping off our stuff, the 3-bed room was lovely. Definitely big enough for 3 people and our luggage.

At this point not only were we tired, but hungry. We didn’t opt for airport food, so our “meals” for the past 24 hours was some nuts and snacks and airplane food. We walked around a bit, and we settled on a pizza shop, Ristorante Da Sina. It was also past 18:00, meaning many non-bar food places were closed (something we did not realize about this area is the early store hours), and we weren’t fancying a fancy restaurant. A couple of shock things we noticed while at this place: first the water isn’t free. That wasn’t as much of a shock as I know in Europe the water isn’t free, but what was actually a shock was that if two or more people order one item for both, they will be charged a surplus. I guess restaurants expect to make some profit from each person, so two people or more ordering the same item would be eating into their margin? Another shocker is the flies flying around. My family knew about this as they talk to people in Europe. This isn’t anything specific to this restaurant, just all over Europe where they don’t care that much about flies flying around. The pizza was excellent though, no complaint there.

After walking back to the hotel, we were done for the day, and finally ready to get proper rest.

Before sleeping, my DigitalRepublic eSIM was finally activated.

Day 1, Wengen

The next day we woke up refreshed and ready for what the day has for us. First tough: breakfast. The hotel includes breakfast, and it’s a combination of a buffet-style and an “order” where you can order eggs, tea, and coffee for the kitchen to make it on the spot (costs nothing). I like my eggs scrambled, so that is what I got along with english breakfast tea and other breakfast items. The tea came in a really nice tiny teapot which was nice. Lovely breakfast.

We took the cable car up to Männlichen station. One of my sibling just graduate, and part of why we came on this trip was to take their graduation photo. The location in Männlichen provided for some great backdrops. That photo session lasted about two hour, which was quite a lot. I also had some pictures taken of myself which came out excellently.

As my sibling was wearing their graduation dress at this point, and we were close enough to the hotel, we took the cable car back down for them to change clothes. Something I first noticed while waiting at the Männlichen station was the birds with their distinct yellow beak and orange feet. These are alpine crows, and this is the first time I saw any. We’ll see a lot more of them later during the trip.

I stayed around the cable car station at Wengen while they went to the hotel, and I got to see a bird sand-bathing and a bee.

After that we went back up to Männlichen, where we took in more of the scenery and walked to the nearby peak. This provided another great viewpoint of Wengen and the entire Interlaken area

It also provided a view of Schynige Platte, which we wanted to go up on, but during the days were were in the area the train up was closed.

After this we walked to another cable car station so we can take it to Grinderwald. I said “another” station as the station to Grinderwald and to Wegen are not the same, they are separated by a 5 minute walk with clear line-of-sight, so not too far. This was a long cable car ride (I think about 20min or so?), with a nice view below. We did get to see some small farms with cows roaming about.

Arriving at Grinderwald, we walked to the bus stop right outside of the station. This bus, which runs every 30min if I recall correctly, was super crowded. Thankfully we found a spot, and rode it until we got to the station to the east of the town for the First cable car that will take us all the way to, well…, First, the last stop in that cable car. This was another lengthy cable car ride (about 30min) with wonderful views along the way. More cows from farms below as well as some sheep. We did get to see some people going downhill with a go-kart, one of the excursions that Jungfrau offers. It does not come with the pass we have, and it was full anyways with a 1-hour wait time, so we skip on doing this.

Arriving at First and walking around, and I cannot emphasis this enough and probably said the same thing many times, there was another set of lovely views, especially of the Wetterhorn nearby. We walked on the “First Cliff Walk”, a walkway on the side of a cliff. It was sort of scarry walking on it, especially at the bridge, but everything is of course designed for safety with more than enough tolerance. This walk also was facing some waterfall nearby.

At the end of the walkway there was an overhang area where it was crowded. We didn’t go all the way to the end (it was a short overhang anyways), but I did manager to get this lovely shot below:

After this we ate some fries (or chips for you British folks) at the restaurant there as a quick snack. You pick your own food inside and pay for it, then you can bring it outside for eating. Something strange I noticed is inside they were selling ketchup packets for like 0.50CHF each, but in the outdoor eating area those some packets were available for free. Odd.

After this we talked to the nearby vantage point giving us a wide view of everything. Also this bear saying hi to us.

I was able to capture this still-frame shot there of this alpine crow jumping down.

We wanted to do the bird glider thing at First, but due to the time and booking, they were no longer allowing walkings for the day. A small bummer.

We took the cable car back down to Grinderwald, at it was almost closing time for everything.

Arriving back at Grinderwald, we walked around to the train station that would take us to Interlaken, as that is what we wanted to do next. We were also hungry, so we figured a dinner at Interlaken was a good choice, although we did not know what we were going to eat at this point.

Arriving at Interlaken, after bumbling around for a bit, we settled on having dinner at the Restaurant Taverne. I think I got myself the “Beef flank steak”. All I remember is it tasted good. It was also sort of expensive, but part for the course for Swiss.

After getting full, and seeing the nearby Koi fish pond, we headed back to Wengen and the hotel.

Day 2, Jaungrau

Another day another lovely breakfast. I ate about the same foods as the day before.

While waiting for my sibling to be prepared, I took the hotel elevator down to the bottom floor where they had a garden area, which was nice for them to have.

We planned to go up Jungfraujoch today, the “Top of Europe”. It isn’t actually the peak of Europe, but it is probably the most accessible one without climbing. We took the train from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg, where we bought the tickets up to Jungfraujoch. It’s not included as part of the Jungfrau pass, but it was half-off with it. One must choose when they will be going back down with the ticket, presumably to prevent overcrowding, so we chose a 3 hour time block. We figured there’s enough to enjoy up there and we did not want to be rushed. The train up from there, after Eigergletscher, took us through inside the mountain, which was the path all the way up to Jungfraujoch. This tunnel was dug out I think sometime before the 1960s, which is quite impressive given the long length. It was also quite steep, so I wonder how much energy it takes for the train to go up, and if there are regenerative braking on the way down.

Something I noticed is there was only room for one train track. At some point it does split into two tracks, where the uphill train stops at an indoor viewing point for 5-10 minutes, which the downhill train came down during that time. This makes sense, why dig twice as much as is needed as long as the trains can be timed correctly? And this is Swiss of course, train timing is their pride. This mid-stop viewpoint gave us the first view of some glacier outside, and the first time seeing it was quite astounding, even if it was through glass.

Continuing the train journey we arrived at Jungfraujoch, where we stayed 3 hours per our ticket. We though this was the perfect time after the fact, as there was a lot to enjoy. First there is of course the cental area with food and a gift shop. Inside the mountain they have a tunnel that loops back with various things to do in between. Below is their map of the place:

First we went the Aletsch Glacier viewing area. This offered a nice view of the Glacier, alongside a tourist photo spot with the swiss back and the glacier as the backdrop. My family wanted to take a picture with it, so I waited the 5 minute queue line.

There was also some ski thing and a walk to another peak; we did not do these.

Then we continued the circle walking through some art decorations inside. Inside a giant glass globe there was some animatronics and trains inside for show

Then we walked to the Ice Palace. The temperature dropped (of course), as it was an all-ice area with sculptures.

Now we know where Scrat ended up at for now.

After this we went up the elevator to Glacier Plateau, which offered another nice view of the glacier alongside a view of the Interlaken area on the other side. There was also a tourist spot with the flag for pictures, but the line for this was much longer, I would guess 15min or so. Of course we passed.

There was this snowman somebody made, where people just kept adding stuff like the nose and arms.

And there were a lot of alpine crows flying around.

After this, and taking in all the views, we went inside the gift shop where we got some stuff for ourselves and friends.

You might have noticed from the circle we missed the Sphinx Terrance in the loop. We did not do this in the first loop, rather we came back to it last, which I think was the plan? Anyways taking the elevator up there, this offered a higher-up view than that of the Plateau. There were of course crows to accompany us.

After all of this, as it was nearing our departure train time, we headed back to the train stop where we waited for the train, which took us to Eigergletscher. We stopped there rather than down at Kleine Scheidegg as we wanted to take another cable car from Eigergletscher to Grindlerwald. We had the pass anyways, might as well utilize it. We mainly did this for the views, as when we arrived at Grinderwald and after a bathroom break, we took the same cable car we took the day before in the opposite direction, back to Männlichen.

We stayed up in Männlichen for a bit, as around the cable car station there was a playground (we did see it the day before as well, but didn’t have time to explore it), and of course wonderful views. We did stay so late though, we forgot that the cable car from the nearby station stopped operation at 17:00, and it was 17:05 when we saw the time. And this was the 5-minute away station I mentioned beforehand. Thankfully we saw a staff waiving at us so we sprinted to that station. It seemed we were not the only one who missed the time, as other were coming from the peak further away. Thankfully the last cable car to Wengen did not go down until 17:15 giving leeway for any late comers. If we missed this, and as the cable car to Grinderwald also stopped, we might have been stuck up there with no choice but to take the 2-3 hour trail downhill to Wengen, which would not have been fun.

Arriving at Wengen, we talked to the train station to Lauterbrunnen to explore that town. We ate at the BASE Cafe, where I got myself a Racklett, while I also finished a half burger my family got too full for. The burger was one of the more delicious burgers I’ve had, and the Racklett was the first time having “proper swiss food” since landing. The cheese with cooked potatoes had a nice flavor to it. While we were eating outside we had to shoo off plenty of flies.

After this we made a plan to walk to the nearby Staubbachfall waterfall. On the way we say some cows from a local farm/barn that was accessible through a motor parking lot. I think it was a mother and their child cow.

Continuing to the waterfall, turns out there is a small hike up and a walkway through a tunnel and on the side of the mountain to get close to the waterfall. It gave off a nice breeze.

After this we headed back to the station, back up to Wengen and our hotel. That night we walked outside the hotel in the garden, where I was able to take this wonderful shot. This isn’t a “dark place” as far as light pollution is concerned, so there wasn’t that much stars (at least compared to Death Valley)

Day 3, Last Minute Detour

This was our last day in Wengen, so I of course savored this last hotel breakfast. All considered with was a wonderful hotel, and if I am back in the area I definitely would be staying with them again.

At the time I knew we would miss this place. Typing this blog 2 months after the trip…I still miss it.

The original plan was to head right to Zurich and explore there for the day. While my parent and I were talking during breakfast, we came up with an unplanned for last-minute plan to stop at Zermatt instead. We took into consideration we would have all of our luggage with it, but thankfully the station provides luggage lockers when we looked it up.

So with this plan set, we headed from Wengen. We were sort of late to the train heading out of Wengen to Lauterbrunnen (with a 30 min wait for the next train). On checking out to the hotel, the receptionist asked if we wanted a drive to the station. We absolutely took on that offer, and were grateful as that lead us right to the station with more time to spare.

Down from Wengen to Lauterbrunnen down to Interlaken, we took the train to Spiez, which we then changed to a train headed for Visp. This train from Spiez to Visp initially did not look special, just another IC train, but when it entered a long tunnel section, it quickly sped up to get us to the destination faster. For some context, the train from Speiz to Visp is 26 minutes, with 10-15 minutes of that being in that high speed tunnel section. To drive, that would be 1.5 hours! Talk about some efficient trains.

From Spiez we took the longer train from Visp to Zermat. It’s funny how the distance from Spiez to Visp is longer thank from Visp to Zermatt, but the train ride is half the time. This train though was slower as it went through a wavy track going alongside a mountain.

Anyways, arriving at Zermatt we put our luggage in the station locker, and went from there. Even from the ground near the station the Matterhorn was clear and visible, which was astounding to see. We had two choices, either we take the train to Gornergrat, or the cable car to the Matterhorn Glacier. We chose the former.

We first went to a local Coop to buy some water, where we met this little puppy.

The train up was a lovely ride. It made many stops in between which we did not go down at (we were in it until the end). I did notice a single hotel along the way up (Riffelhaus 1853). That must be one hell of a time at that hotel with direct view of the Matterhorn and with an easy train up and down.

Arriving at Gornergrat, it came with another set of great views of the Matterhorn, other mountains around the area, and of a glacier. Something funny that happened up there is our phones got pinged with “Welcome to Italy”. We were probably close to the border enough for an Italian cell tower to pick us up.

Gornergrat also had a planetarium (not for public access as far as I can tell), a gift shop (of course), and a small climb to a viewing point. At this top point they had these view things (were weren’t telescope as they did not zoom in) but overlaid some information on the nearby mountains as the view was changed.

We also saw more crows, per usual now.

Did I mention that the weather was also fantastic; not too cold or hot, and perfect visibility. This was the same for the previous 2 days. Seems we lucked out with our timing.

We headed back to Zermatt and walked around for a bit before we departed for Zurich. We wanted to eat something, but couldn’t decide on what, and we had to leave quite quickly so full-on restaurants were out of the question. We chose the local McDonald’s. Yeah yeah it’s generic fast food, but we did want to try it here in Switzerland. They did have some options not available in the US, including a burger with what I think are potato chips. Interesting stuff.

Riding the train to Zermatt, this was a 4 hour train ride, so quite long, with stops in between so we couldn’t doze off the whole time. Arriving at Zurich though, and figuring out how to get to the next hotel, we eventually made it. The hotel was Hotel Züri by Fassbind. It was…an ok hotel. I mean it was clean and all, but nothing spectacular. Plus no breakfast included :(

At this point we wanted to get small snacks like water and ice cream, but was nearing 22:00, so things we closing by. We found a nearby Avec convenience store under a bride (literally), which was initially hard to find due to how GPS directed us.

Day 4, Zurich

First full day in Zurich. I decided to activate a Zurich day pass this day through some official tourist app thing. This gave us 24 hours of unlimited train ride and discounts (if not free passes) on museums and zoos.

One of the places we visited was the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum. The art was interesting. Some things I remember was a forest painting that was too realistic to be a painting, an area of rice (literally rice) by Wolfgang Laib, and some fun abstract painting. There was also an exhibit for artist Felicien Rops, which he drew more explicit art for some high paying clients and drew some symbolic stuff. There was another building to this art museum on the other side of the road, but due to time we did not go there for this trip.

We went to the Zurich zoo next. While a zoo is a zoo, and I have been to many beforehand (although I cannot remember the last one I went to, been a while), it was still nice. We got to see some up-close giraffes, peacocks wondering about freely in the zoo, parrots, and other cute animals. It also rained hard for a bit while we were there, thankfully at that time we were in the indoor area for the giraffes where we stayed put for a bit. We stayed at the zoo until closing time as there was that much to enjoy.

After the zoo, only then through watching others did we realize the water fountains in Zurich are all clean drinking water. Later we also realized the same is of tap water. Coming from the States, this was something we did not expect at all, neither did I encounter this in my research before this trip. In Zurich in particular, there is more than 1000 water continuously running water fountains the city is proud of. So proud there is an annual event where people go and drink from every water fountain in the city.

We settled on a Kebab place for dinner, so we took the train ride to Mit&Ohne. Upon arriving, the line was full and long, but we decided to wait the 20 minutes anyways to get out food. The food was great.

We took the bus back to the hotel and called it a day.

Day 5, Luzern

This day we dedicated to visit Luzern. We started by taking the train from Zurich HB to Luzern, which was an hour long train ride through one of the IC trains.

Arriving at Luzern, we planned during the train ride to do the “Golden Ride”, a pre-curated cable car up and a cogwheel train plus boat down from Mount Pilatus and back to Luzern. This started as a bus ride to a stop 5-10 minutes away from the Kriens cable car station. It was uphill so somewhat tiring. There the cable car took us up to the Fräkmüntegg station. During the ride we got to enjoy a lake view of Luzern from up above and the surrounding area.

At Fräkmüntegg we had to get off to hop on the next cable car up to Pilatus. In that station there were some excursions, such as a restaurant and zipline thing. The view out to Lake Luzern was also wonderful from up here. We noticed that the way up to Pilatus was getting cloudy, with this neat view of cables cars going up disappearing into the clouds.

Heading up on the cable car to Pilatus, it was cool seeing ourselves get “lost” in the clouds as the cable car reached it peak destination. Up at Pilatus there was a full on visitor area with food, a walk on the side of the mountain, a gift shop, and more. While we were up there clouds kept on coming in and out, and we were not able to get a clear view of Lake Luzern. A slight bummer, but alas weather cannot be predicted, and given out previous good luck I wasn’t up to complain. We walked on the pre-defined walking path around the side of the mountain. Right out of the visitor building unto the path, we encountered mountain goats off the side of the cliff. They were licking the rocks, presumably for their salt. Lovely creatures.

Continuing on the walk, it was neat. It was cloudy so no views of the outside can be seen, just grey. The walkway lead us back to the visitor center, where the last end of the walk we can see the mountain below on the other side of the mountain. I also went up a summit area near the visitor center.

The way down from mountain involved taking a cogwheel train, similar to the ones at Jaungrau. This one was different as it was so steep, the car itself was tilted at a 30 or 40 degree angle, with the seats angled so they are flat when the train is coming down. Apparently this is one of the steepest trains ever, so that was neat.

Arriving at Alpnachstad, where the train took us to, from there it was a boat ride back to Luzern. The boat ride was also wonderful giving a lake view of everything around.

Back at Luzern, we walked across the Chappel bridge (of course we had to). The bridge itself is interesting, apparently built in the 1300s or 1400s iirc, and some parts of the bridge had art at the top while walking. On the other side of the bridge we also met some ducks!

From there we walked around downtown Luzern. We stopped by some shops to look at, got some chocolate at a Lindt chocolate shop, and got some candy from a shop called LOLIPOP. For dinner we settled on Restaurant Fritschi, which had some neat art decoration on it’s building. I got the Spinat Rösti, which tasted pretty good. You wouldn’t think potatoes and spinache would taste good together, but alas I was proven wrong.

After that we walked to the Lion momunent, one of the things the city is known for. It was actually neat up close, I though it was going to be a nothing-burger. The sclupture is larger than I exepcted looking at photos of it beforehand.

We walked for a bit, and met this lovely cat sitting on a staircase. I think it’s somebody’s outdoor car as it was in a residential area, and the cat was calm around us.

We walked back to the station after bumbling around for a bit, and called it a day and headed to back to Zurich. At Zurich HB, we discovered that the bathrooms there are require a 1.5CHF payment for use. This was a shocker, I expected every train station bathroom to be open to the public. I guess no there.

Day 6, More Zurich and Shopping

We designated this day as a general walk-around and shopping day.

First, we went back to Zurich HB, and from then walked around Bahnhofstrasse steet. The shops were…expesive, but was on-par for the course given the reputation of that street. I was aparently told some watches there cost 100k$ plus. For that price I would want an atomically accurate clock on my wrist. After walking the street we crossed the Quaibrücke bridge where we met some of these nice ducks and swans on the other side:

We walked to the nearby Dunkin to try it out. They actually sold smoked salmon which was pretty good.

Our next stop was Sihlcity mall to check it out. While we were on the tram there, I decided to check for shit and giggles how far out booking was for the Lindt chocolate museam. We looked it up a couple of days ago, and it was booked for the rest of our trip at the time and way beyond. Just by luck, I noticed an available spot at 14:30 for 3 adults, so I immediatly jumped on that availablity. This was especailly lucky given that the next available date was 1-2 week from that day.

Arriving at Sihlcity, it was…a mall. Relativally small by American standards, but it was fine. Nothing too special there. We did end up bying a thing or two.

After that it was off to Lindt, with a train stop at Bahnhof Enge with a 30min wait. While we were in there we got some lemon and apple flavored crepes at “all about crêpe”, while my sibbling got a smoked salmon crepe. The crepes were fine, although I would have wished a little more flavor.

After that and stopping by Coop for some snacks, we headed right to the Lindt factory. It was an intresting place; it was more about both the history of the company and how technological advances caused Switzerland to become the chocoloate capital of the world, some info on how chocolate was made, and some sustainability stuff that i am sure they are following through with. They did have a dispenser for white, milk, and dark chocolate, so that was fun to fill myself with. At the end of the museam tour they gave out free chocolate balls of like 5 different flavors.

Of course after the museam we went in the gift shop. They actually had a reasonably priced bag with thermal isolation for what it was, so we got that.

After that we headed to the larger Einkaufszentrum Glatt mall. It was a long train ride to the nearest station to the mall, and a 15 minute walk in light rain. There was no “accessible” way into the mall from the Altried train stop. I mean we got there, but it felt more like backroads sort of path.

Arriving at the mall, I noticed a Xiomi shop. This was surprising as I didn’t know they had physical shops in Europe. There I noticed a really good deal on a portable charger that also does QI charging, and it was half off norminal price, so I immediatly got that. Who would have guessed out of all the things I would be getting a good deal on it would be a portable charger, in Swiss out of all places.

We walked around the mall. The mall had a built-in grocery store where we got some stuff, and other neat stores like a candy shop and a store that was closing where we got some closeout sales on gifts. Beyond that the mall was larger than Sihlcity but still a mall. We aren’t really mall people and aren’t super into buying, so it was more of a stroll for us and anything that caught out eyes.

We got quick food at the mall’s McDonald’s, then headed back to the hotel. On the train ride back it really picked up on the rain. Thankfully we weren’t outside when that happened.

At this point we called it a day, given that we have to prepare for our flight the next day as we would be up at 7:00 the latest to get to the airport on time.

Day 7, flight

This is the last day, and as our flight was at 11:00, we had to depart early on so we didn’t do much this day. In the airport, we were forced to check-in all of our carry-ons (at not extra charge) due to cabin space. This is the first time I’ve had an airline non-volunarily demand to take carry-on luggage in. We didn’t have any items that would cause problems, so we didn’t fight it much. It did aleviate the extra weight. At the airport, I was going to go to the outside viewing deck, but it didn’t open until 10:00, and we would’t be there at that time due to our flight. Bummer. After security, we waited until the departure screen told us to go our gate. While we were waiting, we walked around the shops. Turns out, not all airport shops are rip-offs. My family got some discounted perfumes, aparently at a good rate.

We headed to our gate, Gate E, when the screen showcased it was time to head there. It was somewhat far-ish. While we were waiting to board there was another open viewing area at that gate that was open. Seems that I lucked out.

During the flight to Dublin, according to my family one of the on-board items, a perfume which normally sold for 60$, and was priced at 30$ on-board. Who would have thought, a discounted item right on the plane. I suppose they have to sell stuff once in a while.

During the landing at Dublin, there was a lot of turbulance. I had gotten dizzy and was feeling like I would throw up. I have done many flights in the past, but this is a first for me. At the airport, we waited to go to the US Customs area when that opened up for our flight. Turns out, Dublin and US have a deal where customs can happen at Dublin rather than back in the states, so we arrive back as if it was a local flight. A neat idea, which saves on time after an exhausting flight. We had to eat something at the airport in the meanwhile, Burger King we chose. It was fine.

After that and going through customs (thankfully no hick-ups), we boarded the last plane back home, marking the end of our trip.

Fin