WebliminalBlog

Having some days off of work can be beneficial. Cleaning out a draw I came across some receipts from our trip to Switzerland this past summer, and found a receipt from a restaurant that we ate at our last night in Zurich. The restaurant was in a garden, behind a hotel. It seemed that many of the locals knew about it. We just followed some people down a path and came across the restaurant. It was really great. The name is “ZunftHaus Am Neumarkt,” with address Neumarkt 5, 8001 Zurich. You can view its location by clicking on the hyperlink under its name on this Web page.

We’re getting closer to leaving for our trip to Zurich,Tecknau, Lucerne, Lugano, Venice, Guarda, and Reinach. It looks like its going to be fun and naturally we’re interested in getting weather forecasts.

Getting a weather forecast for the major cities is relatively easy. Take a look at Weather Underground or Weather.com. Even the BBC weather spot only gives information about major cities: you can find the weather forecast for Zurich but not for Lucerne. One thing these sites have is that you can get the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit.

That’s nice, but I still can’t use these to get the 5-day forecast for Lucerne, Guarda, and lots of other places in Switzerland. Until, I found Wetter.com. It’s great. You search by the town’s name and you get a 5-day forecast. There are a couple of drawbacks - the temperature is in Celsius and everything is written in German. The site provides lots of forecasts, and I’ve had the chance to learn the German term for precipitation - Niederschlag.

Our upcoming trip is also going to include some time in Italy.

We’ve used several resources to find accommodations and rates. Some of the more useful ones that included links and/or reviews were Fodors Mini Guide to Venice, EuroCHEAPOs Guide to Cheap Hotels in Europe , Slow Travel Italy, Worldinabag - Venice, Rick Steves Italy, and tripadvisor.

In the end it all comes down to writing emails to the various hotels, checking on rates and availability. So far, this seems to have worked fairly well.

Looking for information about the Zurich airport I came across some comprehensive sites that included links to all major airports. One is World Airport Guide (WAG) and the other is International Airport Guide. WAG appeals to me more and I think it is done better. It’s implemented in ASP (no benefit there), and it shows what you can accomplish with a data driven site.

I had some questions about buying a Swiss Flexi Pass at the train station at the Zurich Airport. Searching through the usenet Group rec.travel.europe I read that others had the same questions. I called MySwitzerland.com Switzerland Tourism at 1-877-794-8037, and got some useful information. The person I spoke with said that it was possible and also told me when the train station was open on the day I’d be arriving. I was also able to order some brochures about the cities I’ll be visiting. Very easy and very nice!

The site Switzerland Tourism has lots of useful information about visiting Switzerland.

Some things to keep in mind about visiting Zurich:
Get a Zurich Card at the Airport train station. (Hopefully they’re open on Sunday)
See about going on a tour. Best of Zurich includes a boat ride, it looks like its done by bus or Stroll through the old town - a 2 hour walk
Generally check out the site Zurich Tourismus

We’re going to Zurich at the end of June and will be leaving there at the beginning of July. Finding a hotel (that’s affordable) isn’t too hard, but it has taken some time — talking with friends, reading books, and checking into Web sites. I started with Fodor’s guide to Zurich to get an overview of the city and some hotel options. They have, what seems to me to be a good listing and rating of hotels. Some of the entries have a URL for a hotel, but others don’t. Searching on the name using Google sometimes brings a link to a site for the hotel, but also brings up a number of options for making reservations. I really don’t like most of them, because they’re too general, and, franky, too commercial for my liking.

Lynn picked the place we’ll stay when we leave - Limmatblick. It looks interesting, has a good location downtown, and seems to be fascinated with Dada. I picked the Limmathof. It turns out it is very near the other hotel, and unlike the Limamtblick, it’s listed in Fodor’s Guide. Strangely enough, some friends who have been to Zurich several times suggested we try that place, and I had written for reservations just that afternoon.

When we leave we’ll be there for at least one night of Züri Fäscht mentioned at the Lonely Plant site. it looks like it’s a big festival with fireworks to boot. The official site for this is Zuerifaescht

We’re going to France this summer and we were thinking about buying a France Saver Pass for train travel. Since we need to get from Paris to Cassis at a particular time on a specific day we wanted to make a reservation. We could get time table information at voyages-sncf.com

I posted some questions about this in misc.transport.rail.europe and rec.travel.europe and got lots of useful advice. A very useful piece of advice was to research the topic at the Usenet archive at Google.

For what I thought would be the most authoritative answer I wrote to information at sncf.com and received “I inform you that it is impossible to book a seat on our web site when you have a train pass.”
The message also contained an incorrect phone number for the English-speaking Call Centre. The number they supplied took me to an agent, but not an english-speaking agent. She courteously gave me the current number.

I ended up calling
SNCF English-speaking Call Centre - 33 8 92 35 35 39
Dialing 011 first from the US, made a reservation and purchased tickets. the tickets will be sent to me in the US and should arrive in 10 days.

We decided not to purchase the France Saver Pass. It seems to me that we can get the tickets we need and travel as we wish more cheaply than purchasing the France Saver Pass.

Originally posted May 2002