Dublin

On July 1, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe13 Comments

I wasn’t kidding when I said that May was a crazily busy travel month. Four days after I got back from Italy, I hopped on another plane to go to Dublin, Ireland. I arrived on a Thursday afternoon, made my way to my hotel, and stashed my stuff. Four hours after I set foot in Ireland for the first time, I was waiting for my first tour of the trip.

Normally when I start in a new city, I’ll either explore on my own at first or I’ll take a guided tour that gives me a good overview of a city. Hop-on/Hop-off bus tours are really good for this, because you can see a lot of major sites in one pass and decide easily what you want to spend your time on later.

Dublin was different though. About two months before my Dublin trip, I stumbled across the “Le Cool Dublin Experience” online. From their website: “Find out about DIY culture, street art, fashion, emerging music and literature, artists, hidden historical gems and the latest trends.”

In other words, you never know what you’re going to get when you sign up for a Le Cool Dublin walk. The route and stops are different each time. Only the date and time are announced in advance, so you get there and the rest of the walk is a surprise. “This continually evolving two-hour tour will reflect the now and engage with people behind initiatives which are reshaping Dublin city in vibrant and meaningful ways.”

My tour started with a Q&A session with Jean Butler, who was in preparations for her show, “Hurry.” I was unfamiliar with Jean Butler before this walk, even though I’m quite familiar with Riverdance, a show she helped to launch. If you’re curious, just go to Youtube and put ‘Jean Butler’ in the search box. She’s quite well known, just not to me before this tour.

The Le Cool tour moved on to this gentleman, a tailor who makes hand-made suits. Jude Hughes has been running a tailoring shop in the same location since the 1980s. (Interesting side note: I did some Google searches to find the best link to point to for Jude, and in every single picture I’ve seen of him, he’s wearing a green sweater. Possible the same green sweater in every photo. That’s a bold, Barney-Stinson move, don’t you think?)

Our tour also visited a pair of people who were rushing to open up a new restaurant with a grand opening less than two days later- they were still constructing the place, and had just put the walk-in refridgerator into the building. They spoke with us for a few minutes but couldn’t really stick around.

The final stop of our Le Cool tour was at the apartment of Kevin Powell and Robin Hoshino, the folks behind News Of The Curd, to talk about their suppers. They do a weekly two course supper for roughly a dozen people, using locally sourced and seasonal ingredients in the Temple Bar area.

The Le Cool Experience walking tour was a very interesting introduction to the city, before I got on with the more typical touristy tours I had on my plate for the trip.

After the Le Cool tour wrapped up, I walked around a bit in Temple Bar. Up until this trip, I thought that Temple Bar was a specific bar- I didn’t realize it was an entire part of the city until I got there. Lesson learned!

I thought this pair of street musicians had a neat gimmick going. the “invisible” drummer was pretty good.

On Friday morning, as I prepared to go out for a walking tour of Dublin, something terrible happened. Travesty! Suffering! Ragnarok!

I dropped my camera.

The UV filter (pictured below) took the brunt of the impact, and it was buried with full honors in the hotel room. The helicoil of the lens was not unaffected. It made a weird snapping sound whenever I adjusted the focus of the camera, and the autofocus was no longer quite so automatic. I was able to use the camera somewhat for the walking tour that lie ahead, but I noted the location of a good camera shop so that I could visit around lunchtime.

While I waited for the walking tour to start, I was suitably impressed by the full frontal advertising on the Savoy movie theatre on Upper O’Connell Street.

The walking tour itself covered a lot of interesting things. Dublin has a tremendous amount of old churches that have been repurposed into other things. This one is a bar and restaurant, for example. Naturally, it’s called “The Church.”

The walking tour also passed by Dublin’s castle. It’s not the biggest castle I’ve ever seen, but at least it looks like a castle. Some of the castles I’ve been to hear barely look like a castle at all. This one could have been the model used to sculpt the chess piece of the same name.

During the walking tour, we kept hearing rampaging hordes of screaming children, without really understanding why. It turns out they were all doing their part to be tiny vikings on the amphibious “Viking Splash” tour. With all the hats, this was actually too cute not to share.

The walking tour concluded in the main courtyard of Trinity College. This works out well for me, because I wanted to see the Book of Kells anyway. Near to the Book of Kells is the Trinity College bell tower.

It is said that it rings whenever a virgin walks beneath the arch. It was also a very quiet day around the bell tower.

The main chamber of the Trinity College library is called “The Long Room,” and it’s easy to see why. This place was massively cool to see.

The courtyard behind the bell tower is also where I stumbled across my second sighting of Sfera con Sfera. This one has a significantly smaller diameter than the one at the Vatican, but it seems to be otherwise identical.

Not far from Trinity College is Merrion Square, a small green area where you can find a statue of Oscar Wilde made out of different colored stone.

There were a lot of really interesting statues around Dublin. In fact, I missed a bunch of really good ones. I didn’t get to see the Phil Lynott (from Thin Lizzy) statue on Henry Street because I didn’t know it was there until I’d already left. I did see Jim Larkin, though. I love the outrage of this statue. From one of his noted speeches, “The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.”

Of course Dublin is also famous for being home to more literary greats than you can shake a stick at. Some of them even come with their own stick. For example, James Joyce.

All the famous writers give way to the current crop. This guy was offering poetry for change. I’m not sure whether it was original poetry or borrowed; I didn’t ask.

This giant spike on O’Connell Street is called the Monument of Light, or the Spire of Dublin. The locals have more colorful names for it, because they really don’t like it very much. (The one I can remember right now is “The Stiffy on the Liffey.” Yeah. ) It was built to replace Nelson’s Pillar, which was destroyed by a bomb in 1966.

Not far from the end of O’Connell Street is the Liffey Bridge, known coloquially as the Ha’Penny Bridge. This is a pretty famous landmark, and is featured in movies and television quite often when Dublin turns up.

The Liffey Bridge is yet another bridge that gets the ‘Locks of Love‘ treatment.

More street musicians. Music is everywhere in Dublin. Most of it is even good.

Dublin is a city with a lot of interesting random things going on. For example, I think this was a bachelor party. The gentleman in the yellow and green top was dressed as a leprechaun. Four seconds after I snapped this picture, a random girl ran up and hugged him. I rather wish I’d gotten that picture instead of this one.

There was also a sporting event going on all weekend while I was there, a rugby final between two French teams. As a result, I kept seeing people dressed in the team’s colors.

That last picture was a group I spotted when I was on my way to Kilmainham Gaol. This famous prison is often featured in movies and television. It’s the location where members of the 1916 Easter Rising were imprisoned and, in many cases, executed.

This is the interior cell wall of the jail cell occupied by Grace Gifford Plunkett. She marreid Joseph Plunkett hours before his execution for the uprising in 1916, and was later jailed for her activities with the IRA in 1923. She spent three months in Kilmainham Gaol, and she painted pictures on the walls of her cell, including the Virgin Mary and Christ as seen here through the cell door’s round peep-hole.

This section of the jail has appeared quite often in films and television.

This courtyard is where many of the executions were held by firing squad.

Touring Kilmainham Gaol is very interesting, to be sure, but it’s also sobering and oppressive and the best way to counter that effect is to swing by Leo Burdock’s afterward for some famous traditional fish and chips.

If you luck onto a sunny day, there’s lots of nice things to see. This “Garden of Remembrance” in Parnell Square is pretty and quiet.

There are lots of green spaces in Dublin, and on a sunny and warm day, the flowers are fantastically eye-catching. By this point in the day, I had acquired a new camera lens, and this was actually one of my test shots to see how the new lens was working out. Pretty good, I’d say.

Then there’s Phoenix Park. On more than 1700 acres, this is one of the largest walled city parks in Europe. The Dublin Zoo is actually inside Phoenix Park. So is the Wellington Monument, seen below. The monument is the tallest obelisk in Europe. I like tall things.

This building is Christ Church Cathedral. I only saw this one from the Hop-on/Hop-off tour bus. It sure is neat looking though, isn’t it?

Look, random street art!

There are three more things that you should not visit Dublin without trying at least once, even though they’re incredibly touristy. The first is the Traditional Irish Music Pub Crawl. This starts in a pub, moves to another pub, and then wraps up in yet another pub. You sit, you drink, and you learn about traditional Irish music. You learn about the instruments, the styles, the structure. You learn about reels and jigs and lock-ins. And it’s all fabulous. Mine was run by these two guys.

The second must-do in Dublin is to attend a show of traditional Irish step-dancing. This is often done as dinner-and-a-show, and in that regard it reminded me a great deal of the flamenco show that we saw in Barcelona.

If it were me, I would totally crack my head on those stage lights.

Last, but definitely not least, in my list of must-do items for a visit to Dublin is the most touristy of the three. I don’t care, it’s still worth it. Visit the Guinness Storehouse. This is a giant facility attached to the Guinness Brewery. It’s not a brewery tour, but it does teach you a great deal about the making of beer.

Here’s a fun fact about the Guinness Brewery. See the cláirseach, the celtic harp in the Guinness logo? That’s facing with the curve on the right. Compare that to the image used officially by the Irish government on buildings and coins. The reason for this change of direction is that the harp was trademarked by the Guinness corporation in 1876, so when the Irish government started using it in 1922, they had to turn it around.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the Guinness Storehouse.

Outside of the Guinness Storehouse, the horses that pull the carriages are forced to suffer the indignity of tiny hats. They manage, though.

Embedded in the floor at the center of the main hall is the original 9,000 year lease signed by Arthur Guinness in the 1700s. That made made absolutely sure that he would be able to keep making beer in the same place for a good long time.

The experience is mildly educational, and full of interesting factoids.

Partway up, there’s a place to stop for a snack. I highly recommend the Guinness Chocolate Muffins. I cannot overstate how delicious these were. I wish I had one right now, in fact.

There’s a section called The Guinness Academy, where you can learn to pour the perfect Guinness. You get a certificate and everything.

Finally, there’s the reason that I wanted to go in the first place- The Gravity Bar. At the very top of the Guinness Storehouse, there’s a few more stairs.

They lead to the Gravity Bar. This giant glass walled bar overlooks the surrounding countryside. Your admission to the Storehouse includes a complimentary pint of Guinness, and this is the best place in Dublin to drink it.

For the record, Guinness tastes very different here then it does elsewhere. I’m not sure why this is. Some people say it’s just because it’s fresher. My personal theory is that bottling a beer for export changes the flavor in subtle ways. This is why German beer in America doesn’t taste quite the same as German beer in Germany, in my opinion.

I’m no expert though. I just think it tastes better in Dublin.

Here, have a pint.

Do you like Guinness? Do you like chocolate muffins? Do you think I missed something fantastic on my Dublin trip that I didn’t picture here?

Vatican City: It’s Full Of Papal Stuff

On June 13, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe9 Comments

Previously, on “Steven and Michelle Go To Italy,” our peripatetic siblings checked out Venice and Rome. What’s left? The Vatican, of course! This was our first view of St. Peter’s Piazza, a.k.a. Pope Central.

The archways on either side of the Piazza have a lot of columns on either side of the breezeway- they look like this. Pretty impressive, right?

The way in to the Vatican museums was an enormous spiral walkway. I don’t think this was the usual way in; they said something about the usual way being blocked off for some reason. Anyway, this was a herd moment.

At the top, there’s a series of rooms, and this incredible view. From here, St. Peter’s Basilica looks like a matte painting in a Lucasfilm movie, doesn’t it?

This was our tour guide. She’s from Indiana, as it turns out, but she lives in Rome and works as a Vatican tour guide. She has an incredible amount of knowledge. The big bronze sphere she’s standing in front of is a sculpture called Sfera con Sfera (Sphere within Sphere) by an artist named Arnaldo Pomodoro. Our tour guide pointed out that Arnaldo Pomodoro sounds very nice in Italian, but in English, he’d just be Arnie Tomato. This amuses me.

Sfera con Sfera rests on a disk of mercury, and can be spun by a single person. It’s heavy, but moveable.

I didn’t know this when I was in Vatican City, but there are actually thirteen versions of Sfera con Sfera. I first realized it was not unique when I saw a second one at Trinity College in Dublin. I’ll get back to that in a few weeks when I post about my trip to Dublin- we’re still in Italy.

Well, technically we were in The Holy See, not Italy. Vatican City is a fully functioning and recognized country with its own police, fire, military, and post office. It’s the only country in the entire world with a birth rate of zero. But I digress.

The thirteen different versions of Sfera con Sfera are all different diameters. To give you some sense of scale, take a look at the bronze ball atop the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica in the next photo. Now bear in mind that the diameter of Sfera con Sfera is the same size as the bronze ball at the top of the Basilica. Neat, eh?

Let’s take a break from the Vatican to talk about water in Rome. Specifically, open water spigots that are all over the city. There’s two or three in the Roman Forum. They’re on streets all over the city of Rome. The water is perfectly drinkable, and the locals refill their water bottles from them all the time. The locals also know that if you block the flow from the bottom, there’s a small hole in the top that turns it into a drinking fountain, like so:

Meanwhile, back in the Vatican museums, there’s a whoooole lot of busts.

I’m not really going to talk much about these next few pictures. If you’re a student of art, particularly of sculpture, you’ll most likely recognize some or all of these. I acknowledge that they’re amazing, but I’ve never had much to say about sculpture. Here’s some really amazing sculpture, though.

I mentioned that the Vatican has their own fire department, right? Here it is.

The tour of the Vatican museums goes through the Raphael Rooms. The artwork done by Raphael in these rooms is amazing, especially for someone who spent all that time learning to wield a pair of Sai while running around the sewers of New York.

This particular panel, the School of Athens, is my favorite. Nobody is in this crowd by accident. Dude in the blue robe all by himself? Diogenes. Serious looking man front and center in the purple shirt and calf high boots sitting by himself? That’s Michelangelo. Pythagoras is in there. Euclid is there. Alexander is there. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, all present and accounted for. Raphael painted himself in, as well as his favorite girlfriend. The depth and detail in this fresco is amazing.

I’ve seen Rodin’s work before, several times in several places, but seeing an original of The Thinker always makes me stop and ruminate.

You’re not supposed to take pictures in Michelangelo’s master work, the Sistine Chapel. I’m a rebel. This room is pretty incredible, though.

After the tour, we wound up in front of the Basilica again. There were big banners up because during the Pope’s service the next morning, two nuns were to be canonized. That is, they were to be sainted. I’ve forgotten their names, but I’m sure there’s a Papal website that lists them somewhere.

The Pope’s altar is set up and ready to go.

Before we ran out of time, we took the walk up to the Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica. You know me and my love of tall places. I have to climb. The first part is a short elevator that gets you to this level, and shaves 200 steps off your climb.

From there, it’s still more than 300 steps up, but the view is worth it. Oh yeah.

After we climbed down, we finally went inside the Basilica. The light does this amazing streaming thing that, once again, looks like a matte painting.

I was a little bit amused that the Basilica uses Bose speakers that are painted to blend in with the marble. Very Popey!

No visit to the Vatican is complete without a few minutes spent marveling at the Papal Swiss Guard and their mighty multicolored pantaloons. Members of the Swiss Guard must apply for the position. They must be Catholic, single males with Swiss Citizenship, between the ages of 19 and 30. They must have completed basic training with the Swiss Military.

They must also be able to appear dashing while wearing a black beret, and they must be comfortable with wearing a sword at their left hip, cos it’s there. Hidden in this photograph, though.

I mentioned earlier that the Vatican also has its own Post Office, right? Here’s the front doors. You’re not supposed to take pictures inside, so you can only guess what I did when I went in to mail a postcard.

On our way out of the Vatican, I turned around to take one last picture of St. Mary’s Basilica with the sun behind the Cupola. It’s a hell of a building, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Finally, to wrap up our time in Roma, we went to the pizza restaurant which, according to Trip Advisor, was the number one rated pizza joint in the vicinity. Apparently, being number one means you don’t have to stay open.

Luckily, the place across the street was open and inviting and kind of amazing. It was also called Henry Cow, which I kind of love. I had this pizza. Visible on the pizza are, clockwise from the 12:00 position: artichoke, mushrooms, an egg, prosciutto, and in the center, black olives. It was absolutely delicious, and it was a fantastic last supper. I mean it was a great last meal in Italy.

Have you ever seen the Sistine Chapel? Is that the biggest ball of brass you’ve ever seen? Have you ever had an egg on a pizza? Is soy gelato still technically gelato?

Hannover (and Minden)

On May 20, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany7 Comments

On the weekend of April 27-28, I went to Minden for a Peter Cincotti concert. It is not an exaggeration to say that I’ve been looking forward to that show more than the Depeche Mode concert in June. Seriously, if you don’t know Peter Cincotti’s music, you should really check him out. For those of you on Spotify, here’s a very brief selection of his stuff. If you don’t use Spotify- these play buttons won’t work without the software. You’ll have to check Youtube to hear some of his stuff instead. Just check him out. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Ok, now that we’ve got the Peter Cincotti plug out of the way, I’ll talk about Hannover. I traveled to Minden for the concert by way of Hannover, and I did some sightseeing in Hannover on Saturday before the concert and again on Sunday before my train back home. I took a pantload of pictures, and I decided to show them to you a little bit out of sequence. This isn’t exactly the order that I visited stuff, but it’s close enough.

While walking around on that Saturday, I was more than a little bit surprised to see one of these:

While walking near the Kröpcke, a large pedestrian area near the Bahnhof, I also stumbled across a random volleyball tournament. This happened last year in Amsterdam too- it was rather unexpected.

I also wanted to point out this ingenious way to sell food. I saw one of these in Berlin a while back selling currywurst. I am consistently amazed at people’s ingenuity. Also, I kind of want one of those hands-free go-go-Gadget umbrellas. That’s really nifty!

I didn’t eat lunch from this guy though, I went to Jack The Ripper’s London Tavern instead. I mostly went because I liked the name of the restaurant, but the fish and chips were pretty good..

I took a walk down to the Leibnizufer to see the Nanas, large colorful sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle. I had seen one other Nana recently, the flying protecting angel sculpture in Zurich. It’s the first picture in my Zurich post. When I learned that Niki de Saint Phalle was an honorary citizen of Hannover and had donated a lot of her artwork to the city, I had to go see some. They weren’t hard to find, either.

With my quest to see the Nanas a success, I decided to take the tram over to the Herrenhäuser Gärten, the Great Garden of Herrenhausen. It was absolutely enormous, and I could easily dedicate several hours to walking around on a warmer, sunnier, more flowerific day. That Saturday was cold and overcast, but it was still an amazing place. I wandered around for nearly two hours. Here are eight of the many, many photographs I took at Herrenhausen.

We interrupt this post about Hannover to show you a picture from an art gallery window in Minden. I really, really like the duck detectives, but I have no idea why. Also, the supplicant ant in the background cracks me up. If I ever go back to Minden when this place is open, I am totally buying one of the ducks though.

Meanwhile, back in Hannover, the weather cleared up a great deal. Sunday wasn’t any warmer than Saturday, but at least the sun came out. This means that the sky got bluer and the pictures got prettier.

Hannover has a lot of interesting sculptures. I find sculptures and statues that I like in every city I visit, but Hannover has a larger than average share of really neat ones. This giant gate and the caesar-looking dude on the horse are both standing at an intersection not terribly far from the Neues Rathaus, which I’ll get to a little further down in this post.

This glum fellow with the umbrella is standing not far away from a glum looking woman holding an umbrella. I really want to know the story behind this one.

Someone gave these two very red eyes. It makes them look really creepy. I’m just sayin’.

Hannover has a nice looking opera house. I know nothing further about this building. It sure is cool looking though.

One of the highlights of my trip to Hannover was the Neues Rathaus, the old “New Town Hall.” The building is no longer used for the main city administration, but it’s still got some offices in it. More importantly, you can walk around inside and go up inside the dome for a small fee. You know me and tall places, how could I not climb up?

The first part of the “climb” is actually an elevator to a small stairway to… another elevator. This elevator does most of the vertical ascent, but there are glass panels in the floor and ceiling to show you the shaft as you travel. The next picture is looking up and the following picture is looking down the elevator shaft. This is not for the claustrophobic, agoraphobic, or acrophobic.

At the top of the elevator, there is a chamber filled with decades of “Francisco was here, 1988!” styled graffiti, as well as a metal spiral staircase to get you to the upper levels of the observation dome.

The view from the observation level at the top of the stairs is amazing if you’re there on a clear day.

After visiting the dome, I walked around the inside of the building for a while. The grand staircase and the ceiling in the center chamber are amazing.

There are also a variety of models of the city of Hannover in various times. This one shows how bombed out the city was in 1945, which is really fascinating to see.

Segway tour! I saw these guys as I was walking around the Rathaus. I’ve always wanted to go on a Segway tour.

This is the view from the water’s edge behind the Rathaus. There’s a cafe right there- if I’d been hungry when I was at the Rathaus, I can’t think of a nicer place to sit and eat.

Lastly, this building… I’m not actually sure what it was. I assume it’s a church of some sort. It was just neat looking, so I snapped some pictures of it.

Have you ever been to Hannover?

Easter Weekend 2013, Part Four: The Rhine Falls

On May 9, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe7 Comments

The Friday and Monday surrounding Easter weekend this year were public holidays in Bavaria. Since I had a long weekend, I decided to do a whirlwind tour through Strasbourg France, Freiburg Germany, Zurich Switzerland, and the Rhine Falls near the Swiss-German border. The last stop on my whirlwind weekend was at the Rhine Falls!

On Easter Monday, the first of April, I boarded this adorable little Regional Express train from Zurich’s main station to Schaffhausen, in Switzerland. After a 40-45 minute train ride, another short bus took me from Schaffhausen over to Neuhausen am Rheinfall, to go check out the Rhine Falls, Europe’s largest waterfall.

When I was planning the trip, I discovered a nice restaurant directly overlooking the Falls, Schlössli Wörth. I made a reservation for lunch a few weeks in advance, and it’s a good thing I did, because the restaurant was completely booked when I arrived. The restaurant is in this structure. The docks are shared with tour boats that go directly up to the falls.

All of the tables in the restaurant line the outer ring of the building, and have great views out toward the falls. My table had a fantastic view.

This is what I was looking at while I ate. I couldn’t stop staring out the window. I’m extremely happy that the sun came out for this part of my trip.

My meal was amazingly good, also. This is a fillet of perch with saffron-butter over risotto. It was so good, I had a glass of wine. I almost never drink wine. This restaurant is a little pricey, but it was well worth it.

After treating myself to a nice lunch, I got on with the business of being a tourist at the Falls. From the shore, it looks very impressive. There are several different tour boats that go on different paths near the Falls.

I chose the yellow boats, which go to an outcropping of rock in the middle of the falls. You can climb up a winding stair to get a higher vantage point, with the waterfall on either side of you. The only way to get to this point is by boat. Here’s the boat.

In this photo, you can see one of the boats approaching the rock with the stairs. This shot gives you a sense of the scale and size of the waterfalls, since you can see tiny people on both the boat and the rocks.

“We’re headed right for the Falls!”

When we reached the tiny boat ramp at the base of the rocky outcropping, I was hilariously amused to note that standing off to one side, waiting to get on the boat to return to shore, were a pair of Mormon missionaries. The Mormons have been my constant companion as I tour all over Europe, Their little plastic name badges (Elder Smith, Elder Cunningham) are a source of bemused comfort now. But I digress.

The stairs are actually quite narrow and the entire structure is much smaller than it looks. It felt a little too crowded while I was there, and it was difficult to get good pictures from the stairs without other people in the frame. That didn’t stop me from trying, though.

Since I’ve been on the Maid Of The Mists at Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls, this seemed like a bit of a smaller waterfall to me. Still, it was damned impressive. I like waterfalls as much as I like tall places and trains. Now I need to see Victoria Falls.

What’s your favorite waterfall?

Easter Weekend 2013, Part Three: Zurich, Switzerland

On April 29, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe12 Comments

The Friday and Monday surrounding Easter weekend this year were public holidays in Bavaria. Since I had a long weekend, I decided to do a whirlwind tour through Strasbourg France, Freiburg Germany, Zurich Switzerland, and the Rhine Falls near the Swiss-German border. I’m going to write about them one at a time, though. Next up is Zurich!

Sunday morning, I grabbed an early train from Freiburg into Zurich. If you arrive by train, you will find yourself in one of the busiest train stations in the world, with nearly three thousand trains a day. Hanging overhead in the main hall, you’ll see L’Ange Protecteur by French artist and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, a French sculptor. I hadn’t heard of her sculptures, called Nanas, until I saw this one. There’s a bunch more in in various places around Europe.

In front of the train station, there is easy access to the street tram system, and from there you can get almost anywhere else in the city. The street directly opposite, Bahnhofstrasse, is a very busy and fairly well known shopping street. I spent some time in the evening walking down this street trying to find the source of a tantalizingly delicious smelling food smell- I never figured out where it was coming from.

I took the tram to the Rathaus stop in order to see some of the more well known sights in Zurich, and that let me out in front of this building:

From there, it was a very short walk to most of what I wanted to see. First I walked up the hill to Lindenhof. This is a hill in the middle of the city, with a really spectacular view. Apparently it used to be a Roman fort, but honestly, this is Europe- what wasn’t a part of an old Roman fort? You can see Grossmünster, the church with the two dome-shaped spires on the right side there. That’s the next place I walked.

Grossmünster was a very impressive structure. I didn’t know until after I was gone that you can actually climb the tower. Blast! I missed a chance to go into a tall thing! I’m sure I’ll be back there in the near future, though.

The door of Grossmünster is ornate and fascinating.

Grossmünster is quite pretty inside, also.

Across the river from Grossmünster is a courtyard area that connects shopping streets (and the climb to Lindenhof) to Fraumünster. There are a lot of clocks in Zurich. I wonder how often one of them is wrong.

Inside Fraumünster there are four glass windows which were painted by Marc Chagall. You’re not supposed to take pictures of them from inside the church, so pretend you didn’t see this.

After a busy day of seeing churches and not climbing them, I stopped for lunch in a tasty place called Cafe Odeon, which has apparently been open for more than 100 years.

I had the Rösti, which is a common food in Switzerland, a fried potato dish which is somewhat similar to hash browns. In this case, I had it with fried eggs and a some vegetables. It was quite delicious.

Easter graffiti! I saw this while I was walking to where the Jacob Coffee Museum is. Unfortunately, the Coffee Museum is closed for renovation. The information I read said that it would be open in March of 2013, but it was most definitely not finished with renovations. Oops!

While I was walking to yet another closed attraction (stupid holiday weekend), I saw this lovely flowering tree. Someone tricked this plant into thinking it was already springtime.

The aforementioned closed attraction- This is the Polybahn, a 19th century funicular that goes steeply up and down one of the hills near the center. I like funiculars, naturally, but this one wasn’t running. Stupid holiday weekend.

That was the bulk of my sightseeing for the day. I went back to the hotel room for a little while to shake off a headache in the late afternoon, and didn’t go out again except for dinner, a little more wandering, and some dessert. Dessert was this amazing piece of apple pie at Hotel Schweizerhof’s Café Gourmet, a nifty little place for a snack across the street from the Bahnhof.