and all is organized by the swiss...

well, jono and i arrived in zurich from milan mid-afternoonish on monday (i think - days are still blurring together). anyway, we went out and explored the city. not much to talk about that everyone doesn't already know about. zurich is very clean, very well organized, trains run on time (almost to the second, in fact). so we embarked on our quest to find a local eating establishment that had a decent view. while on our way, we kept on seeing these print ads for swiss milk. according to their ads, the reason swiss milk tastes so good is because the cows do yoga. yea, i don't get it either. but maybe if our cows did yoga, our milk would taste better. for the most part, i don't really like milk in europe. bad experiences over the last 15 some odd years, but that's just me. but this ad intrigued me, so i went out on a limb and decided to try some of this so called "yoga milk"... and i'll be honest, it's the best milk i've ever had in europe. now that statement by itself that's kinda like sayin you're the best kickboxer in belgium, but actually it was pretty good. ain't got nothin on guernsey's, but still good.

so the city of zurich is set up on a river that feeds into lake zurich. the area around the river and into the mouth of the lake (which is called the zurichsee in german, so i might refer to it as a sea at some point throughout here) is pretty nice. the one thing that stands out is that although there seem to be a few tourist boats passing along the river, you also see a lot of swans swimming leasurely along the edges. the funny thing in this is that the river is apparently so clean that the locals often swim along side the swans. you can really see this near the mouth of the sea as they have a 15meter structure in the water that the kids tend to jump off of for fun. silly swiss... but to get out there, you have to swim. and instead of jumping off the ledge nearest the thing, some of these kids decided to take a dive off the top of the bridge we were standing on. this kinda looks funny, cause one second you're standin next to some dude - then a few seconds later he takes his shirt off, hands his wallet to his friend and jumps in. silly swiss... after watchin all this for a long time, i don't really have much that left itself in my memory besides this.

it was nice out the entire time in zurich, so i took advantage of it by layin out on a bench near the lake or a park at the top of the city and catchin up a bit on my readin (yes you smartalecs, i CAN read... thanks).

so as i was gettin ready to leave, i noticed an interesting piece of artwork in the zurich train station. talk about pickin yourself a winner.

back to the homeland

my time in milan can be summed up in 4 words - italian chicks are HOTT!!! (and yes, they're so hot that both t's are required)... but since you don't pay me to only write 4 words, oh wait you don't pay me at all.... hold on a second here... but i digress, since you don't read these things to only see 4 words, i figured i'd delve into my time there a little more descriptively...

so my time in milan started off at this train station... and if i didn't see this with my own eyes, i woulda swore it was some cgi'd visual effect in the latest die hard movie (what is he, 58 now?????) but this was an awesome piece of architecture about 7 stories high and spanned almost an entire city block, just breathtaking... (and i'm done with the architectural portion of this tour, follow me right along this way to get to the hypocritical sarcasm you've grown accustom to)....

so i met up with JonO at this large train station and we began our way around the city, but since neither of us did our homework on where to go, we were a little corn-fuse-ed as to where to go. so we went with tried and true attractions like mickey d's... who knew they had "walk thru" ordering here... anywho, here's our lovely lovely meals that we enjoyed, cause after all - when you're in a city known for good meals and great food, why not be a typical american and chow down some golden arches...

after receivin a call from the center of all knowledge, we had an idea of what we wanted to see. we were told to head down to the massive cathedral, people watch and venture in and out of the stores. now, this covered street here is the place to be. it has all the main shops of all the main fashion designers in the world. fun times to go in and pretend like we had enough money to buy this stuff. but we also saw a few "unusual" street performers. i.e. my first opera street performer and my first violinist street performer. absolutely breathtaking. after that we headed out into the square to people watch. and boy was our information correct. the place is such a tourist attraction that EVERYBODY and their brother walks through that court. we sat down at a sidewalk cafe and prolly overpaid for a liter of beer and a panini, but we made up for it in the ecletic mix of people walkin past us every minute... fine grandma, i'll put up a pic of the cathedral d'duomo... apparently it's really big in some circles... some might even say it's absolutely breathtaking...

but after watchin the people and hangin out, jono and i realized that our lovely hotel room was lackin certain necessities - a shower curtain (or even an edge to the tub), a fridge, air conditioning and a tv that worked... so we decided to kick back and cool off with some local brew.

the remainder of our time there was spent walkin the city lookin for the cheapest knock-off soccer jersey's we could find. and i'll admit, we did a good job. oh, and just so "some people" don't go harassin us - yes, we also stopped by the big park in the center and few other local landmarks...

and yes, i think both of our lastin memories will be wakin up in the middle of the night sweatin to death cause we didn't have a/c and it was like 98 degrees over there... we'll definitely be glad to get to zurich where it's both cooler and we have a decent hotel.

oh, and milan wins, so far, for the best pizza award... absotutely breathtaking.