My Trip to Switzerland

Winter Vacation

his past December, my father and I took a two week long trip to Switzerland. My grandmother was originally from a small town in Switzerland so we wanted to go and see where she was from. It was very beautiful but also very cold. I would love to go back in the spring or summer months and be able to experience the country in warmer weather. I do not know how to ski which is one of the main reasons to go there in the winter months so we were indoors or on the train for the majority of the time we were there. We took the train all over the country which was really cool because I had never been on a train like that before. Their rail system is much more advanced than ours.

We flew into Zurich which was a very cool city. Although it is a larger city, they have managed to keep a lot of the orignal architecture in the old town and build up around it. The streets are still mostly cobblestone in the downtown area. The hotel we stayed at there was called Hotel Hirschen and was very old. There was a wine cellar on the bottom floor that served wine and cheese and had a glass floor area where you could see down into a well from the 1400's.

Local Cuisine

The food in Switzerland was a bit different than what is common here. For breakfast, they would usually have fresh bread and cheeses with fruit preserves, muesli, cold cut meats, and maybe some plain yogurt. The hardest thing for me to get used to was the size of the coffee. I am a big coffee drinker and their idea of a cup of coffee was in the teeny tiny expresso mug! Their other foods were more like "comfort foods." Lots of schnitzels, pastas, and stews.