The Allisons

Happy New Year! We traveled to Zurich, Switzerland to ring in the new year! This picture was taken at the beginning of our road trip.
We had planned to watch the fire works over Lake Zurich. After relaxing in our hotel after the 6 hour drive (it would have been shorter but for a lunch stop and some trouble finding our hotel), we got bundled up and ventured downtown to find something to eat. There was a shopping/restaurant street where there was lots of options, but on New Years Eve, they were all packed. We walked up and down the street a time or two and then Mike settled for some sausage and I had (horror or horrors...) McDonald's. I don't even like McDonald's in the States, but as nasty as that sounded to me, it sounded slightly better than the mystery meat sausage Mike was eating. We still had about 3 hours to kill (the fire works didn't start until 12:30 am. Why? I don't know. We did a little more walking and then stopped in for some Starbucks coffee (almost the highlight of my trip). We warmed up and then ventured back out into the revelry. We finished walking down the river to the lake. There was a carnival like atmosphere across the last bridge where many booths were set up selling all manner of food, drink, and trinkets. There were also several "disco" tents where people were dancing to loud music. We tried to stake out a good fire-works-watching position on the bridge, but quickly realized it was even colder on the bridge than walking around. We decided we couldn't just stand there for an hour and a half. There was a little more walking around, but then Ezra, despite his adequate bundling (or so I thought) got too cold and too tired. We tried everything we could think of to console him, but we felt like the worse parents in the world for having our wailing baby out at almost midnight, in sub-freezing temperatures. After crying and more crying, we decided to call it a night and head home (walk back through town to the train station, 4 stops on the train, walk to our car, drive back to the hotel). Luckily, after almost an hour of crying, Ezra finally passed out a little after midnight right before the train arrived to take us back to the hotel. We celebrated the passing of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 on the bottom level of a train station in Zurich. Not quite what we had pictured, but I suppose it makes for a memorable New Years. It was getting kind of ridiculous in the crowd anyway. We witnessed several people vomiting in the streets, and there were already two puddles of barf on the train. Gross!! I'm sure it would have only gotten worse as the night wore on.
This is Ezra in his first train station on New Years Day.
On New Years Day, we bundled up again and headed back down town. We went to the street with all the shops on it, but they were all closed of course. Most of the restaurants were also closed. Ezra has had a cold for close to a week, and Mike and I were getting sore throats and runny noses. It was just too cold to do much of anything. It was DEFINITELY too cold for seeing the city by foot. We hit the high lights the night before (some churches, the river, the old town...). Therefore, we got some more Starbucks (God bless Starbucks), and headed back to the train station where all the shops were open. The train station pretty much had a mall in it, so we were able to stock up on Swiss chocolates (something I was very much looking forward to), postcards, some souvenirs and eat some lunch before heading back to the warmth of the hotel room where we spent the latter part of the afternoon and the evening. Wednesday, we took one last drive through the city and started our trip back home.
The trip home also took a little longer than it might have otherwise on account of driving through snow for about an hour. The picture of the snowy trees was taken as we were driving very slowly through the snow. But the drive both ways was beautiful. We just barely missed going through Lichtenstein, but nobody was really in the mood for a detour, no matter how short. Some other trip perhaps. We did go through Heidiland though. :)