street parade

Minh and his sister Liz came to visit for a weekend on the first top of a Eurotrip to Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. They arrived early Saturday morning and they were troopers because it was a long day! I rented a car for the weekend and it was so much fun to drive! After making it back to my apartment, and some quick showers, we went for a walk around the city to show them the main sights.

 

By the end of our walk, the beginning of "street parade" festivities were evident. There were a lot of people walking around in crazy costumes. Many of them carrying bottles of liquor. Minh and Liz were definitely in for a unique Zurich experience. After stopping back at my apartment to grab some beers, we headed out to join the crowd. Street Parade is prime for people watching. The parade consists of 30 "love floats" which have dj's, blaring techno music, and dancers.

 

 

This is one of the floats:

 

After awhile, we met up with my friends Daniela and Mariana and some of their friends. The highlight was Minh and Liz getting a picture with a real-live Swiss cow:

 

Getting to where Daniela and Mariana were was not so hard, but by the time we tried to make our way back, the crowd seemed to have quadrupled. We finally made our way back to the other side of the lake after making a detour around the impassible part of the crowd. Here is a picture of just how massive of a crowd there was that we tried to get back through:

 

We stopped on the way home at the grocery store and got food to grill out and had an amazing dinner on the roof.

 

Some of my friends then came over for drinks with the plan of going out later that evening. The going out never happened once we started playing drinking games...

 

New Swiss drinking game we learned:

 

The whole group with our "moose" hands out:

 

 

stockholm

My friend Alayna and I decided to take advantage of the August 1st holiday in Switzerland and escape the heat for a Nordic adventure in Stockholm, Sweden.We had a very nice extra-long weekend. Our trip started out great with a ride on the luxurious train from the airport to the city center. If you think Swiss trains are nice and clean, you have not experienced the Swedish ones!

After walking 500m from the train station we arrived at our hotel, it was very convenient. We checked in and then went for a walk. The sunset was beautiful on the water. We made it to Gamla Stan (the old town) and found a cute place for dinner. We both had steaks and they were delicious!

 

  

The week we were visiting was Stockholm's pride week and even the buses were decked out for the occasion!

 

We spent the day Thursday walking around the whole city, doing some shopping and taking in the sights.

 

During a brief rainstorm we stopped in a cafe and had some desserts. The cafe was very eclectically decorated, including these old jukeboxes at the tables.

 

Thursday night we met up for drinks with Alayna's friends from Zurich who also happened to be in Stockholm - Olof and Ryan. Olof is Swedish so they had been on vacation visiting his family and he got to answer all of our questions about Sweden. The bar we were at was really cool - on a barge on the water. There was this completely random Jewish pride flag, so we had to get a picture!

 

On Friday, we took a boat to Vaxholm, one of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago. The island was very cute. We had lunch, did some shopping, and watched the boats on the water. The boat ride there and back was also beautiful and we saw a lot of the other islands in the archipelago as well.

 

Friday night we met up again with Olof and Ryan and one of Olof's friends for dinner and a night of drinking. We had a great time, as evidenced by the pictures of the sun rising in the following pictures!

On Saturday morning when we woke up, only one thing would do for lunch---Pizza Hut! As two Americans that have been living with a lack of "American" pizza in Switzerland, we couldn't resist that stuffed-crust goodness!

After stuffing our faces with stuffed crust pizza and fountain diet sodas (with ice - go Sweden!), we walked along the water and found a nice area and layed out and swam in the water. For Sweden, it was very hot and there were a lot of others that were taking advantage of the nice weather too.

A wonderful trip and this was the furthest north that Alayna and I had ever been!

mom & dad in switzerland

After we dropped Lainey, Josh and the kids off at the airport, Mom, Dad, and I drove to Basel, which is really one of my favorite Swiss cities. I've been there a few times visiting my friend Lise. Unfortunately Lise was out of town when I was there with mom and dad, but she gave us some good tips and recommendations.

 

We enjoyed walking around the city and doing some window shopping. We stopped at this cafe for tea and coffee. The cafe is inside an old church that has been turned into an event center. 

We walked through the old town area and through the main square. Since it was a Saturday, the outdoor market was in full swing.

We then walked across one of the bridges and along the Rhine river. It was a gorgeous day and there were lots of swimmers in the river.

We took this adorable little ferry back across the river.

 

Our next stop was the cathedral. This is the first time I've actually gone inside and it is beautiful.

 

 

The last stop on our little tour of Basel was this amazing restaurant that Lise recommended. It was the cutest place. We sat outside in the shade and we all devoured our gnocchi. Later that week, on the last day of mom and dad's trip, we were talking about all the places they'd visited and I said Basel and dad said, "is that the place where we had that awesome lunch?" and I said, "yes!" (after as many new places as they went to, it was hard to keep track of all the names).

On Sunday I took mom and dad to the english speaking church that I go to. After church we drove to Schaffhausen. We walked the 3km to the Rhine falls. We stopped along the way for lunch - we'd brought pretzel sandwiches with us. When we made it to the falls, we walked around a bit but decided not to do the boat tour.

Look at these  lovebirds!!

 

Then we did a more strenuous walk back up a couple of steep hills (we didn't want to go the same route we came). By the time we made it back to Schaffhausen, my parents were tired and I was ready for ice cream. As we walked (uphill of course), my parents started to talk about all of their ailments which have been "flaring up" as a result of all the walking we'd been doing since they were here and not to mention the 5 flights of stairs to get to my apartment. It was hilarious to listen to the two of them. I think between the two, they named every single body part and it was hurting at least one of them! So, I looked up how far the walk to the ice cream place was and told them it was 7 minutes away. My parents stopped at this point and said I was trying to kill them with 15 more minutes of walking! So we decided to opt for driving to the ice cream place instead of walking.

During the week my parents spent a day in Zurich while I was working and then went to Rome for a few days. They were back to make dinner for me on Thursday night and my friend Jelena joined us. On Friday, I got out of work early. I met my parents for lunch at the lake and then we walked around the town a little bit and had Sprungli treats for dessert.

 

After making our way around the city, we decided to have a couple beers and relax by the lake since it was such a nice day. Then we went to Reithalle for drinks and an early dinner. We spent our last evening together enjoying the sunset on the roof. I dropped them at the airport on Saturday morning (which we'd just done with Lainey and her family one week before). When I got back to my apartment that day it was very quiet. I was glad I had plans with friends to spend the day at the lake and then have a grill out at my place so I had some company :)

And here is the final picture from my parent's trip....those damn stairs at my apartment that almost killed them!!!!