Friday 30th July- Last Full Day in Zurich


For our last full day in Switzerland, we had thought that the zoo would be a fun way of spending it.

Due to our lack of funds, we admittedly…(and shamefully) resorted to stealing supplies of bread rolls, butter sachets and little sticks of cheese at breakfast, and made a few rough sandwiches in the communal kitchen in order to take an extremely basic picnic along with us for the day!

We got the tram to the zoo, where we were able to get in for half price as we were all under 24, and had the day to view all 360 species of animals and birds!

For me personally, having never seen Emperor Penguins at a zoo before, they were my highlight. Although I was surprised at how short they were! Nonetheless they provided brilliant entertainment swimming around their tank.

Another good piece of entertainment was undoubtedly the four of us as we attempted the monkey bars outside the gorilla enclosure. Finally admitting defeat and realising that we were not quite as acrobatic as we had hoped, we settled on just hanging on one bar long enough for some photos to be taken!

Towards the end of the zoo experience, another brilliant fixture was the Amazonian rainforest walkthrough centre that had been built. Similar to the Eden Project in Cornwall, a glass dome had been constructed, in which tropical plants grew as tall as the roof, and countless birds, butterflies, insects and even lemurs were free to roam their surroundings.
After the zoo, we made a brief visit to a small toy museum back in the centre of the city. The woman in charge of the museum was lovely and obviously excited about having some new visitors! After realising that we were English, she pointed out to us the one English doll in the museum’s collection. The doll was made entirely of wax, but looked as intricate as if she had been made of china. We were also shown the original inspiration for Barbie, who turned out to be a German 1950’s pin up model called Bild Lilly.

Having had several childhood memories fuelled by the sight of so many toys, we left the tiny museum and headed back to the hotel, where we once again made our own evening meal concoction!

To pass the quiet evening, we had several rounds of UNO, and as Lexi settled down for a pre-bedtime nap, Hannah, Kat and Iwandered down to the waterfront, where a small group of  musicians were playing. The atmosphere was calm and relaxing, with the mountains rising along the horizon, and the music softly lilting over the surface of the water.