After a quick breakfast at the Luxembourg Marriott Hotel Alfa, we checked out and headed to Zurich by train. This was not originally part of our travel plans as we were going to return to Belgium but due to the SNCB strike decided to go to Switzerland instead. After a late arrival in Zurich, we visited Uetliberg, a small mountain on the west side of the city that we’ve never visited before. After enjoying the view and a tiny bit of snow on the ground, we visited the Lindt Home of Chocolate where we enjoyed some free chocolate and bought some chocolate as well. We returned to Zurich to check in at the Kameha Grand, a hotel we’ve stayed at before.
Morning
We woke up early enough at the Luxembourg Marriott Hotel Alfa to finish packing and have a quick breakfast in the restaurant when it opened at 6:30am. We then checked out and crossed the street with our bags to start heading to Zurich.
Luxembourg to Zurich
When we started this trip, we arrived in Europe at Brussels. The plan was to visit Luxembourg and then return today to Brussels where we would spend two nights before flying back across the Atlantic. However, when we arrived, we discovered that there was a SNCB, the Belgian national railway company, strike scheduled from the 26th through 30th. With these strikes, the impact is often quite uncertain. So, we decided to change our plans.
We were able to change our plane tickets to fly home from Zurich instead. This ended up being a bit of a fiasco with United because the customer service agent put us in the wrong class of service. We had purchased premium economy, marketed as Premium Plus, and upgraded using United’s PlusPoints currency to business, marketed as Polaris. We should have been put back into premium economy, however, we were put in regular economy instead. Upgrading from economy is more expensive than upgrading from premium economy. We did get it fixed after calling again twice and after much discussion to try and get the agent to actually understand how the previous agent messed things up.
The train part was easy. We bought tickets with SNCF, the French national railway company, to travel to Zurich via Mulhouse, France. We would take a TGV INOUI to Mulhouse and then change to a TGV Lyria to Zurich. INOUI is the branding for the standard TGV service while Lyria seems to be something like a joint venture with the SBB, the Swiss federal railway company. The distinction between INOUI and Lyria isn’t particularly important.
We boarded an empty train at 7am with a scheduled 7:13am departure time.
This is the Gare de Mulhouse. Now, we weren’t supposed to really have any time to go outside and take a quick look around. However, our train from Luxembourg arrived late which caused us to miss the train to Zurich. This isn’t really much of a problem as Mulhouse is actually only 25 minutes away from Basel, Switzerland, by train, and Basel is well connected to Zurich with the trip taking about an hour. However, TGV Lyria service between Mulhouse and Zurich is very infrequent.
We spoke to SNCF customer service to see if they could issue us tickets to Zurich by taking SNCF to Basel and then on SBB to Zurich. They didn’t have any way of interfacing with the SBB in any way, however, they were able to give us tickets to Basel and said to talk to customer service there.
We had some time before the next train to Basel so took a quick look around outside. There’s not really anything to see by the station, but that isn’t unusual.
The station was a good size but otherwise mostly unremarkable.
The train to Basel was on TER, the French regional rail service. In our experience, these trains range from modern to… well… not so modern.
After arriving in Basel, we went to try to talk to SNCF customer service. It turns out that there is no French customer service here so we talked to the SBB instead. They annotated our ticket and said to talk to the conductor on the train.
This was our first time in Basel. The train station had a really nicely designed hall with a wooden ceiling and beautiful paintings of Swiss scenery. It’s good to be back in Switzerland!
We headed up to the platform to catch our train to Zurich. They don’t always check tickets on Swiss trains, however, they did this time. We explained what happened. They at first were hesitant but we explained that we had talked to SBB customer service. Basically, the conductor said that there is supposed to be some document that gets generated, which didn’t get done. Still, he let us travel without penalty or having to pay any additional fare.
Uetliberg
After arriving in Zurich at around 12:30pm, we first put our bags into a storage locker. We then went to take the S10 to Uetliberg. It turns out that the S10 is actually operated by the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn (SZU), along with the S4, and has its own dedicated platform. The plan is to visit the Lindt Home of Chocolate afterwards as we already have timed entry tickets for 4:30pm.
We actually went to the platform and decided to take a later train so we could eat first. We ended up eating at mit&ohne, a döner shop in the station. It took us a bit of time to find as the Zurich Hauptbahnhof is fairly large with multiple areas with restaurants and shops.
The price for a chicken döner with extra meat was more than double what we paid for döner in Luxembourg. That’s Switzerland pricing! It was very good though.
We got to Uetliberg’s station at around 2pm with the trip taking about twenty minutes.
The south end of the platform had a view to the south. It was cloudy though and we couldn’t really see too far. But, we did see snow on the ground!
Hmm. Yeah, I think we’re going that way!
We followed a trail was it ascended with many stairs.
There was then a path that thankfully wasn’t muddy despite being wet.
There was apparently some sort of fortification a very long time ago here. Much older than the fortresses and castles we’ve visited recently!
OUTER OR MAIN RAMPART OF THE PREHISTORIC UETLIBERG FORTRESS
APPROX. 1000 BC
TRACES OF OLD TIMBER LACING AND A STONE CORE INSIDE THE RAMPART FROM APPROX. 400 BC
ZURICH BEAUTIFICATION SOCIETY
– Text from the plaque in the photograph above, translated from German using Google Translate.
There are also planets here and a star! This path we’re on is the Planetenweg! And this orange ball is the Sun!
Our Solar System
Planet Trail at a scale of 1:1,000,000,000 (1:1 billion)
Dear Visitors
You are about to start a journey through a model of our Solar System. During your walk you will find interesting information about the Sun, the 8 planets from Mercury to Neptune and the Planetoids Pluto and Ceres. The distance from the Sun to the planets and the size of the celestial bodies in this model have the same scale of 1 to 1 billion (1m equals 1 million km ). During your walk you will travel at more than twice the speed of light.
In the Middle Ages people believed that our planet Earth was the centre of the celestial globe, with the Sun, the Moon, the planets and all the stars orbiting around it. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was one of the first astronomers who put the Sun at the centre with the Earth and all other planets moving around the Sun. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) discovered that the planets are moving in elliptical orbits. Another milestone in understanding the motion of the planets was postulated by Isaac Newton (1643-1727) when he discovered the law of gravity. Only gravitation allows the planets to move around the Sun for billions of years.
In the 50's, the Space Age missions began. On 20th July 1969 the Americans managed to land on the Moon. Many of you may remember Neil Armstrong's famous words „That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“. What will be the next step? Are we going to Mars sometime ahead?
Now, enjoy your trip through the Solar System!
Urania Astronomical Society Zurich
www.aguz.ch
www.urania-sternwarte.ch
– Text from the sign below the Sun on a stick.
So… Here is Venus. Its the tiny little ball to the right of the sign!
The path straight ahead goes to Uto Staffel, a restaurant that is further away than we plan on going today. We followed the path to the left which goes uphill.
We noticed these interesting deer lamps.
Very odd.
There must be some story here! And there is… Hildegard and Bertha, daughters of King Ludwig of Germany, lived in the mountains above Zurich. A deer with lighted horns would lead them down to the Limmat every evening to pray, and then would lead them back home. This resulted in the Fraumünster being created at that spot by the Limmat. The modern day deer sculptures we see here were created by Bruno Weber.
There is a actually a sculpture park, the Bruno Weber Park, which has many of his creations on display. It is nearby in Dietikon.
There were more defenses here.
INNER RAMPARTS AND DITCH
OF THE PREHISTORIC
UETLIBERG FORTRESS
C. 1000 BC
ZURICH BEAUTIFICATION SOCIETY
– Text from the plaque in the photograph above, translated from German using Google Translate.
We’ve reached out destination!
WINTER MAGIC
on the
UETLIBERG
– Text from the sign in the photograph above, translated from German using Google Translate.
There is a large metal observation tower atop Uetliberg.
There is an automated ticket machine and entry gate to access this tower, which belongs to the Uto Kulm hotel here at the peak.
There was a good sized triangular platform up at the top. It was pretty cold and windy, very different from Luxembourg which was warm in comparison!
The view to the north shows a radio and TV tower on the left, Swisscom‘s Fernsehturm Uetliberg. The urbanized area that occupies most of the view is northwestern Zurich.
With a triangular platform, there are six easy directions to observe at every 60°. Rotating to the right, we’re more or less looking East North East. The view here is of central Zurich with Lake Zurich to the right. Looking down, we can see parts of the Uetliberg below us that we haven’t walked over to yet as we pretty much went right for this tower!
Turning to the right again, we can see a curve in Lake Zurich for in the distance as well as many snow capped peaks. Kilchberg, the town where the Lindt Home of Chocolate is located, is somewhere down there between us and the lake.
Looking to the south, the landscape is mostly rural with more snow capped peaks in the distance.
Rotating again, its still pretty rural. There are less mountains visible in this direction.
Finally, we can see the Fernsehturm Uetliberg again along with the buildings of the hotel below.
We swapped to the telephoto lens to take a look around, particularly at the distant mountain peaks. Would there be anything we could recognize?
Its pretty hard to say if we captured any places that we know.
We also looked closely at Zurich. Here, we can see where the lake ends and flows into the city as the Limmat.
The platforms of the Hauptbahnhof is at the center here with the large station building over on the right.
We can see many places we’ve been to before in this frame. The Polyterrasse near the upper left, and various historic churches in the city.
This is basically a continuation of the previous photograph… Churches are still most easily identifiable structures.
This one is easy, its Zurich Airport!
We looked around at the mountains a bit more. There are some visible signs of human development but we’d have to really do some research to identify these mountains! Maybe we should have asked AI…
We started to head back down…
There are some landings where you can stand and rest.
The entrance gate and ticket machine.
We walked over to the area east of the observation tower that we saw from above.
There are even deer benches!
The view here is just a bit lower than up atop the observation tower but otherwise quite similar.
Definitely not going this way!
The tower, as seen from the east.
After taking a quick look around, we started to head back down to the train station.
We decided to take a slightly different path though.
This sign says to be careful as logging is taking place in the places marked in orange on this map.
Logging Operations
Logging operations are taking place in the areas marked in orange. In addition to forest maintenance, these operations ensure the safety of forest visitors.
Please strictly observe all signs and barriers, even if it appears that no work is currently underway.
Contact
Uetliberg Forest District
T +41 44 412 07 70
More information
stadt-zuerich.ch/wald
– Text from the sign in the photograph above, translated from German using Google Translate.
There wasn’t much to see here and the weather was starting to get worse so we returned quickly to the train station.
Lindt Home of Chocolate
After getting on the S10, we found a more optimal route to get to the Lindt Home of Chocolate. We got off the train at Selnau. We then walked over to the adjacent Bahnhof Selnau tram stop, seen here.
We then took tram line 8 to the Rentenanstalt stop and caught a bus to the Kilchberg ZH, Lindt & Sprüngli stop. A sign at the corner indicated where to go next!
We walked just a little bit until we reached this building, which contains the Lindt Home of Chocolate, and turned left.
Here we are! We got here at 4:29pm! Perfect timing!
This is Lindt’s corporate headquarters and Swiss factory. They have other factories as well throughout Europe and in the US.
There is even a Grand Tour of Switzerland sign!
There was a Valentine’s Day display, which is in a little bit more than two weeks from now.
There is a large chocolate fountain the entrance lobby. It looks like what the Lindt Master Chocolatier uses to make chocolates.
You know, this guy?
We walked up to the second floor to begin walking through the tour route.
Welcome!
This first part of the museum focuses on the origin of chocolate and how its made. The audio guide provides details at each of the stations.
There were some chocolate related artifacts on display from what we’d call Central America.
This large room had a depiction of various areas of Switzerland that were historically important for various reasons, including but not limited to chocolate production. There are some elements of this display that have a bit of video, for example, in the house here on the left. It doesn’t make too much sense without the audio guide though.
This section features the Jungfraubahn at the base of the mountains with a train entering a tunnel, as well as the peaks of Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger above.
This machine was an invention of Rodolphe Lindt, founder of Lindt. He invented a process, conching, and this device in 1879, to make “chocolate with a silky smooth, velvety texture”.
After this, there was a tasting room which provided unlimited amounts of chocolate to sample. There was also a room with Lindt Lindor chocolates, which wasn’t unlimited. These areas weren’t really great to photograph as there were a ton of people around.
Finally, there was an experimental chocolate production line. Unfortunately, it was not in operation during our visit.
After walking through the tour route, we headed back downstairs to visit the very large shop.
Lindt is available pretty much everywhere in Europe. So we didn’t feel the need to buy things that we could easily buy in other places. These chocolate cubes were exclusive to this location.
Kameha Grand Zurich
After our visit, we took the bus back to Zurich Hauptbahnhof to pick up our bags. We happened to notice this fountain around a column. We’ve walked through this area a number of times and have never noticed this before!
After getting our bags, we ended up walking through the station’s main hall on our way to the tram stop that we wanted to use to get to the Kameha Grand, which is in Glattpark, a development in Opfikon near Zurich Airport.
The entrance to the Kameha Grand was just a short walk from the tram stop. The last time we stayed here, it was mainly for the modernity of the hotel and room, price, and reasonable convenience. The same applies to this time around as well, particularly as Zurich tends to be a pretty expensive place to stay.
Our room was pretty much the same as the one we stayed in previously.
The bathroom features many many mirrored surfaces…
It also has a tub, which is always nice.
We received a welcome note and a few snacks as well.