He says: We rolled into Zurich after a ten hour flight from Beijing thoroughly fatigued. Three straight days of long haul flights was starting to catch up to me. We were given a special treat of a night at the Uetileberg - a hotel located on a mountain overlooking Zurich - from an old family friend of Shauna's, Kathy Fleig. It was a great night and we ate at the hotel restaurant overlooking the city and the mountains. It was romance central - complete with rose petals on the table. It was also the first time we could check emails in a few days, as the restaurant had wifi, so we looked like a couple of douchebags checking our phones, instead of enjoying the moment completely.

It became clear that the dry air in the airplane cabins was taking a toll on my nasal passage because the next morning I started hemmoraging from my left nostril. Blood was spilling out like a BP oil rig. I was getting pretty freaked out at the amount of blood leaving my nose (Shauna swears it wasn't that bad), but luckily the geyser finally stopped after about 15 minutes. I rarely get nosebleeds, and this one took the cake. I did plenty of Web MD research following my brush with death and found out that quite a few people have experienced the same trauma after long haul flights and it's not serious.

After getting my nose under control we hit up the spa at the hotel and relaxed for the next few hours before heading back into town to check-in to our next hotel.

For our second night we stayed in West Zurich (located about 15 minutes from the downtown area). It was great, we got a free room upgrade at check-in which included free mini-bar snacks and movies. Kathy met us at the hotel and we grabbed dinner at an Italian restaurant near the hotel.

I really liked Zurich - the food was unbelievable. The Swiss definitely know how to make pastries, chocolate, and cheese. We toured around the main strip today, which included stumbling upon a huge flea market, where I picked up a vintage 8mm video camera for $15.

We were looking for a place to eat lunch and saw this small building that had dozens of people sunbathing outside on a dock. When we were about to enter a large lady greeted us and said, "no, no, no, no - woman only!" it turns out that it was a woman only club and that upon further inspection, most were sunbathing topless. We had seen them from afar and thought they were dudes. Yikes.

Now it's onto Rome!