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Emerson was in her element today, a buffet breakfast! With watermelon! A drizzly cold morning and a tour that doesn't start until after 10 meant she was in no hurry to finish up. Without mobile data we had to revert back to city maps posted on bus shelters, luckily it's all so well organised finding our way to the tour centre was dead easy.
Getting to the tour kick-off point meant we visited one of the city biggest attractions on the way, Hauptbahnhof. With nearly 400k passenger movements a day the place is massive. They had half the concourse set aside for FIFA events, particularly for tonights Germany v Brazil semi-final.
The tour took us up Bahnhofstrasse and around to Lake Zurich. Even in this drizzly weather the vista is still magical. Back to the bus, we went around to the foothills below The Dopler and took the clockwork train up the mountain to the Dopler Grand. The most expensive suite here is over 14k francs a night! On the way back down we passed the headquarters of FIFA and the Zoo on our way to the Altstadt for some church visits.
Fraumunster was founded in 850s for aristocracy who wanted to lock away their daughters, I told Emerson they've dropped the Aristocracy requirement these days, she wasn't impressed. The modern claim to fame is the more recent stained glass windows by Marc Chagall installed in the 1970s. Across the Limmat river is the Grossmunster founded by Charlemagne in the early 13th century.
This brings us to the shopping heart of the tour and the place we decide to leave the tour behind and stroll for the afternoon. Along to the end of Bahnhofstrasse where most of the stores had their sales on - the $875 Prada loafers were clearly a bargain because they were 30% off what fool would pay $1100? I was able to resist Yesterday I lost one of Emerson's bracelets, to combat the guilt I promised to replace it when we got to Zurich, I was thinking costume jewelry like the one I lost. Emerson naturally thought she was slightly more special and in the window of Graff diamonds found a perfect 20.3ct replacement for the bracelet I'd lost. Happily Sprungli was across the road so she was easily distracted by the sugar.
We had lunch in Sprungli proper Zurich setting - everyone was dressed for a catwalk and the food still deserved centre stage. Further along we found a swatch store where they both picked a watch - Max's has FIFA flags for each of the countries we're visiting on our trip. Further along and we found Franz Carl Weber - the Hamleys of Zurich four stories of toys and we left without purchasing anything!
b*****ed by this point we've had a stroll around shopville before finishing the day and getting ready for our early start tomorrow. The game must have started around 10pm the roar all around us as Germany leapt ahead to 5:0 was fantastic, the whole neighbourhood lit up in excitement. Unfortunately we were all too b*****ed to stay up too far into the second half - 7:1 I'm glad we're not in Rio today!
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