Our first 24 hours in Switzerland have had their ups and downs, literally.
In Zurich, we cleared customs quickly, as the Swiss don't even give you a form to fill out for immigration into their fair country. Just hand over your passport, get another country stamp (yippee!) and away you go.
Then it was onto the train into town, using a Swiss Rail Pass that will allow us to travel on every sort of public transport (trains, trams, buses) throughout the trip. At the main train station, Swiss native Maja Gartmann (my Swiss Tourism host) and I transferred to a tram, which took us right through the very heart of Zurich. Completely easy to navigate, that was the simple part of the trip, despite both of us have two pieces of rolling luggage (we are both going to be traveling in Europe for about three weeks).
We were headed to the B2 Boutique Hotel http://www.b2boutiquehotels.com/, a just-opened inn created in a historically protected old brewery building, which sits high on a hill overlooking the city. Following the hotel's instructions to take the tram from the train station made sense, we thought, until we had walked about a quarter mile from the tram stop, only to discover that the only way to get to the hotel was straight up. Literally.
Looks lovely, doesn't it? Well, not when you are standing below it, at the bottom of a quarter-mile of cobblestone street stretching out above you, looking up at it. No sidewalks. Just cobblestone, on about a 60-degree angle, straight up. In sunny, 80-degree weather. No other way to get up there.
So up, up, up we went, dragging (in my case) about 75 pounds of stuff (50 pounds in my suitcase, 25 in my rolling office) behind me in a teeth-and-bone rattling hike, thumpty thumping across that seemingly endless cobblestone. The arthritis in my hands was not happy, nor was I.
When we finally staggered into the hotel lobby, covered in sweat (and pissed as shit), the first thing the people at the front desk said to us was, "Why, you could have just taken the train from the main station to the Glesshübel stop and taken the lift directly up to the hotel." I swear, I almost lunged for the guy's throat when he said that with a slight smirk. Epic fail!
Of course, when we looked at their website, as Maja had done beforehand, it suggested the tram as the main way to get there. Needless to say, they have changed that now, after we served as the guinea pigs who proved that it is sheer idiocy to tell guests to climb a small mountain across cobblestones with their luggage to get to their hotel.
On the up side? We definitely got our exercise for the day.
And the hotel is pretty cool, incorporating many of the elements of the brewery in the chic modern design. Like these chandeliers made of beer bottles salvaged from the brewery, on their original drying racks:
The restaurant/bar area below those gorgeous light fixtures is pretty interesting, too, with books as coffee tables.
And also needless to say, when we left this morning for St. Moritz, we did NOT walk to the tram. Even though this time it would have been all downhill.
