Weekend Excursions

On Saturday we spend the afternoon at the Zürich Zoo. Most of the outside exhibits were closed, but they have a fabulous Madagascar Rainforest exhibit with large tortoises (one of which Travis put in the CT last week at the Tierspital), fruit bats, monkeys, and birds. The trees and plants growing in the exhibit were amazing and it was hot and humid inside, a wonderful feeling compared to the biting wind outside. The humidity was so high that Leif's glasses were fogged up for several minutes when we stepped inside and occasionally water dripped off the leaves from above. We also spent time exploring the an amphibian exhibit with a large collection of poisonous frogs- spectacular in their bright yellow, blue and red colors. Another highlight were the weeks-old tiny marmoset babies on the back of their mother in a tree. They also had a newborn sloth and another monkey pair with a baby born in January. When the zoo closed at 5pm we went to a nearby pizza restaurant and had dinner. So far most of the places we've eaten have had pizza and pasta (perhaps the proximity to Italy influences their love of their food). The pizzas are thin and individually sized, typically topped with mushrooms and proscuitto. We were joined at our table by a couple and their 2 1/2 year old daughter. The woman spoke English very well and gave us some tips on meeting people in the city. Then we decided to walk down the hill through the forest to our apartment. It was dark, and a little bit icy on the trails, but still and beautiful. Elisabet held by hand and chatted to me the entire time. I accidently took us a little out of our way (there are TONS of trails winding through the forest and I've run on a few of them) so we walked for about an hour to get home. I think it we take a more direct route we could do it in 30 minutes or so. Amazingly, no one complained about all the walking- I'm sure it helped that it was mostly all downhill.

This weekend we also took a trip to a town on the other end of Zürichsee called Rapperswil. The town has a section which is closed off to cars and has a castle from the 1200s and a wooden bridge that stretches across the lake. The castle was bought and restored by a Polish count and has a Polish museum inside. Leif was hoping to learn about knights and medieval armor, but most of the museum was about the German and Russian invasions of Poland in the 20th century. Still, there were a few cases with swords and guns to keep him interested.

The snow started falling steadily in the afternoon while we were out walking on the wooden bridge. We were excited to see some interesting water birds such as the pochard, goosander, red-headed pochard, and even the exotic Mandarin duck (from E. Asia).