Not long after we arrived in Zurich we began to take note of fountains, sometimes simple and other times, very elaborate fountains . . . drinking fountains. They are everywhere. In fact there are 1200 of them dispersed throughout the city. I took photos of some and now that I know more, I wish I had photographed every single one we saw, but thankfully we did capture a few. We have learned that the first of these public drinking fountains was built in 1453, and the City of Zurich adds five new fountains each year. Over 400 of these fountains are fed by mountain springs, tested regularity for purity. The others are fed by the city's tap water system. No other city in the world hosts such an artistic, wonderful service for its people or has more public fountains than Zurich. Interesting point: many of the fountains have ground-level flowing water spigots for thirsty pets too.

We returned to the National Museum of Zurich. We just did not feel we had seen enough yesterday.

But before we reached the museum, we had to walk through the underground station past far too many shops offering beautiful, glorious baked goods. I normally can pass this stuff right by without a thought but these shops are literally everywhere you look. How do they do it? Where do they do it? I would love to know just how many tons of bread and bread products are baked each day here . And each pastry, muffin, roll, loaf, cookie, cake is a masterpiece, beautifully crafted and baked with love. We had a pfaffenhut (think faffenhoot). It looked like an apple turnover but was in fact was a cookie-like pastry filled with sweetened ground nuts. MMMMMMM! It was worth every bite. Then we past a cheese shop too. We just stopped to look, but a lady who was making a purchase said, oh you must try the truffle cheese; I don't know the true name, but I plan to return there tomorrow to get it, because I want to know.

In the museum, we literally walked through the turbulent war-filled history of Switzerland starting shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400's. We learned that many of today's Swiss peoples' ancestors were actually immigrants from other countries and we also learned that Switzerland too had aperiod of significant emigration to countries like USA, France and Russia. We were impressed with Switzerland's recent history; their unique societal attitude and correspondingly simplistic form of governmental style. We were introduced to Switzerland's leadership in industrial development, their engineering contribution to machine design and production, textile design and production, medical research and pharmaceutical production. And I cannot leave this topic without touching on their famous precision Swiss-made time pieces, their world-renown banking system and luxurious chocolates and chocolate products.

Anywaaaaay . . . We nearly missed lunch. Nice restaurants here serve lunch from 11 am until 2:30 pm and open again around 6 pm. We really did not want Italian, but it was open. The young lady there in the bistro was bubbly and cute. We looked at the menu and Stan said he was actually looking for some authentic Swiss food. She said I know where you must go and she gave us clear directions to get there. We did and it was again, wonderful.

The day was beginning to close but the sun peeked out. We could not believe it!! Sun!!! We decided to catch the S10 to ride up to Zurich's mountain, standing 2000 feet over the city. It was a scenic ride uphill through neighborhoods we had not seen before. When we finally reached the final stop on the line, we needed to walk another 15 minutes to the top. It snowed up here on the mountain last night and the 15-minute uphill walk seemed treacherous with ice and snow. Our good sense took over and we decided that reaching the top was not worth a broken ankle or twisted knee. Plus a fog settled in over us and the view was clouded. We got back on the tram and went back down the mountain and headed toward our apartment - lots of packing to do tonight for our train trip to Como tomorrow.

The tram took us back to underground Central Station, the place where we bought the phaffenhut and the place where the cheese shop is located. Well, I could not resist, I bought some of that truffle cheese and I also bought a nice hunk of another cheese that looks like brie but is the sweetest, mild, soft cheese you have ever put in your mouth.

I'll add only one last note, Zurich is a lovely place . . a very, lovely, obsurdly expensive place.