Day 8, we finally left rainy Venice for Zurich. Not much to be said for the short flight but somehow we got completely turned around from the tram stop to our hotel, which was only 5 minutes away, and ended up lugging around two checked in luggages plus one hand carry and two backpacks for half an hour. Spooked by that, Mum insisted on calling a taxi to Fraumunster which was actually not that far (price of a short ride from the closest tram stop to the hotel). I was still apprehensive of taxis after the Rome airport incident but the taxi driver this time around was honest, displaying the Google map openly. So we mainly visited Fraumunster and the lake since we could not really find our way to Alstadt or Old town in Zurich. We had dinner at the place I reserved way earlier than the time I actually booked and they let us do that. I had the marinated salmon and Mum decided to order calf kidneys after seeing it at a surrounding table. The calf kidneys were actually yummy.
Day 9 was spent at Lucerne where we did half of the attractions (basically, we gave up Musegg Wall and the attractions on that side). I also had visiting the Meggen Castle being an optional item on this day but we did not really feel like it so we just returned to Zurich where we grabbed a quick bite to eat for dinner at Santa Lucia Subito which was right next to our hotel. I ordered the ravioli alla parmigiana (dumplings with eggplant fillings) for Mum and the salmon spaghetti for myself. To be honest, the eggplant dumplings tasted more like pumpkin dumplings (I think that’s because there was too much butter and the whole dish just tasted buttery). My salmon spaghetti was all right but I’m not crazy about creamy sauce in general. I could have ordered pizza but the pizza was fairly overpriced at this place- a plain Margherita pizza costing 18 Swiss Franc.
On day 10, we took a train to Thun and just at the square near my hotel was the prime spot for taking a picture of Thun Castle. So, Mum and I did the cheat way of just taking a picture of it down below rather than going all the way up. In fact, that is the approach we’ve been using for this whole trip. At Cinque Terre, we mostly just took pictures at the entrance rather than hiking up any stairs. Well, the only physical exertion we had was at Riomaggiore where we could not avoid going up the steep incline because its terrain was just steep. But, back to Thun, I don’t think we visited much attractions in Thun on this day. The only place we visited was Mühleplat where we chose to have lunch and ice-cream as dessert at La Faroviro, an icecream place/cafe combo. It was a Sunday with not all places open for dinner so we just walked around nearby to see which restaurant was open and ordered a seafood pizza at an Italian place called Al Ponte.
Day 11 was supposed to be spent at Spiez but I also wanted to visit Schloss Schdau which I originally planned to visit on day 10 (but we always cut down on my planned itinerary whenever we felt tired) so we split the day between Thun in the morning and Spiez in the afternoon. We took the bus to Schloss Schdau and got off at the wrong bus stop but it was still fairly close so we walked over to the park housing this ‘pink’ castle (it is pink but a very light coloured pink and sometimes looks a little orangey). We hopped over to Spiez via bus (because it was free with the Panorama Card that came with our stay in a hotel) and walked to Spiez Castle. We did not end up actually buying tickets for a tour but we took enough pictures without having to pay because the foyer was free for public access. We originally planned to do part of Faulensee walk but instead we just walked along the harbour and had lunch at one of the restaurants there. We went back to Thun for dinner at my reserved Italian place where we shared garlic prawns and a spaghetti (no recollection of which exactly and even with a photo, no idea what the noodles came with- some fried stuff?, the noodles looked like egg noodles, flat, thickish in width but very thin by height).
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