Christmas Vacation - Part 2 - Switzerland

We arrived in Geneva and checked into Eastwest hotel. The train ride was quite long so it was already late by the time we got settled at the hotel. We went to a pub to watch the Manchester City match and had a late dinner before going to sleep.

On Tuesday, we got up and walked across the lake to the shopping district. The main language in this part of Switzerland is French so we had a bit of a language barrier to deal with. We waited in line outside the supposed best chocolatier in Geneva and I got a small box of truffles. Dan got a gold star for this considering there are few things he dislikes more than waiting in a line and chocolate. Haha. That night we had dinner at a hotel restaurant which was pretty good, then we walked back to our place to get some rest. We had an early morning wake up call the following morning to take a bus up to Chamonix.

 Geneva's fountain from the Mont Blanc bridge/Dan's true feelings about chocolate

The bus ride up was uneventful. It was unseasonably warm throughout much of Europe so there wasn't much snow. This was obviously disappointing but we dealt with what we had. This was one of the few things that Dan really wanted to do on the trip so I was happy we were able to do it. We skied a bit throughout the afternoon.... Dan skied... very well, as usual. I fell most of the way down. I was much better in Tahoe but I guess that was already 4 years ago so I lost my snow-legs. You can take the girl out of Florida, but you can't take the Florida out of the girl. That said, Dan was incredibly patient with me and my last run of the day was... respectable. (Even that's probably an overstatement but, hey, just let me have this one.)

We got back to the hotel, showered up and went on a hunt for dinner. We found a burger place that was very busy so figured that was a good sign. We ate there and went home to rest after a long day.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, we headed off to Zurich. We stayed at Hotel St. Gotthard which was perfectly located right near the train station and on the main shopping street. Unfortunately, everything was already closed for the holiday but the city was very well decorated with Christmas lights almost anywhere you looked. The main street had strands of lights hung vertically from 4-5 stories up the whole way down the street. It was an impressive sight.

Months before we traveled, I contacted the hotel's concierge regarding restaurant recommendations. I suspected many places would be closed for the holiday and I didn't want to wait too long to book a table and find that nothing was available. She helped us book tables for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, we went to a place called Blaue Ente (blue duck in German). What we didn't know was that it was not actually in the city center. So we took the train out to the suburbs and went to a cute little place for dinner. The food was good and it was packed so clearly we made a good selection.

On Christmas Day, we kept the family tradition going of seeing a movie. Any guesses? Yep, Star Wars... again. BUT this time it was in English, thankfully. We laughed on the way home about the bits we had totally wrong or just missed entirely from our first viewing in Italian. We took a nap, facetimed our family to wish everyone Merry Christmas and went off to dinner at Zunfthaus Zur Waag.

The building was beautiful and based on the photos inside, it is quite old. Dinner was really good and the ambiance was nice. We didn't feel rushed at all. I actually didn't see many tables turn over so maybe they only took one reservation per table for the entire night. Lots of families out and about. On the way home, we found a pub that was open and figured it would be a quiet way to wind down. Boy, were we wrong. It was jam-packed. People everywhere at 10pm on Christmas.

We stayed for a bit and then went back to get our things together for the next train ride the following morning. Next stop: France.