Walking down to the waterfront, we discovered the city’s most recognisable monuments; the Chapel Bridge and the Spreuer Bridge. Built in 1333 as a part of the city’s fortifications, the Chapel Bridge had gabled paintings of old battles and seemed as sturdy as the day it was built. Even a fire in 1993 couldn’t destroy the bridge! The sheer volume and speed of the water flowing through the town was impressive. After crossing over the bridge several times and taking heaps of photos of the surroundings and the huge swans, we ventured into the Fuβgängerzone to explore the cobbled streets, marktplatz’s and ancient buildings.
It wasn’t long before we discovered all the swiss watch, knife and chocolate shops. The watches were far too expensive for us, but the sheer range of styles was amazing to look at. There was a knife shop around the corner which had knives ranging from the tiniest swiss army pocket knives to full size samurai swords and broadswords (Albion and Excalibur). There was also a commemorative swiss army pocket knife which had all of the instruments that they make (about 100), but it wouldn’t fit in any pocket. We had originally heard that Germany was the land of chocolate, but for us the land of chocolate is Switzerland with so many shops containing so much swiss chocolate. Correspondingly, we bought and ate a lot – very nice but very naughty!
Just after lunch, the weather suddenly cleared and it became very bright and hot. Gill and Will went back to our room for a sleep while Lou and I went in search of lunch. We found a place in the Weinmarkt that served a nice large pizza and had lovely old buildings and a water fountain which had a wonderful feeling about it.
We decided to take Will to McDonald’s for a play which was great for him because he hadn’t done many exciting things over the last few days. He had fun playing with balloons, sliding down the slide and jostling with the local bully boy. After that we took a walk along the Museggmauer (ancient rampart walls) which were very high and had some very steep, scary steps inside the towers. Fortunately, we made it out of the clock tower before it went off because it was very loud.
The dining out is expensive in Switzerland so we set out to find a supermarket to get something simple for dinner. We’d heard that the supermarkets were underground, so we headed to the Bahnhof (railway station) and down the escalator to the Co-op. We found some good hard bread, some ham and cheese and a nice wine with a screw cap . We had dinner in our room followed by some more chocolate. After Will went to sleep, Gill offered to look after him while we went out for an evening stroll as the sun was setting.
