I have, so far, been very careful to keep a backup copy of my photos in three places. My laptop, a portable hard drive, and a thumb drive. I also leave the pics on the camera and reformat the card when it fills up. For some reason my laptop doesn't want to let me delete them off my camera, so I have to reformat the card using the camera menus to get it back to empty.
Well, somehow or other I thought I had loaded them on my laptop, and I realized that the card wasn't going to hold anymore stuff, so I figured it would be okay to just go ahead and reformat before I did the other two backups. ARRGGGHHHHH! I looked everywhere, and the pics are not to be found.
Thanks to Emma Prophet, I now have another backup plan. Keep the pics on the camera card, and use another (clean) card and continue shooting. Clean it all up later. Good advice. Thanks Emma.
I took a lot of pics and it was a beautiful sunny day - I was very busy. So, I am going to break this up into a couple of parts (or three), because I visited the Botanical Gardens, did another walk around because it was such a beautiful day, went to two museums, and then did a river taxi ride on the river and out to the lake. So, please bear with me, and I'll try to get you as much as I can as fast as I can.
First, I visited the Botanical Gardens - http://www.bg.uzh.ch/index_en.html -
I got up early just to beat the crowds and got there right around opening time at 7:30 am. I mapped the route to the gardens on Google last night, and printed a copy to my iPad, just to be sure.
When I went to catch the tram that was supposed to take me to the gardens, I found that Google wasn't as accurate as I thought. After asking around, I found out the tram I needed was up above (remember to always look up???) - on the overpass above the tram station where I was standing. So apologies to Google. They were right, but not totally accurate. I'm glad I am not shy about asking for help, and people here are very helpful.
The trip to the gardens took a good 1/2 hour, but it was nice to ride with the locals in their neighborhoods I got to see a side of Zurich that was a lot calmer than what I experienced when I got here yesterday. Zurich is a very beautiful city and very clean.
The gardens are situated in a residential area, and they were open when I got there. It was just a matter of walking in and strolling about. I was the only one there for quite a while.
Although it's not very big, it has a nice layout, and it makes for a pleasant morning stroll. Lots of flowers and green expanses. Most of the flowers on display were native and there were lots of wildflowers.
There were also a couple of ponds - one larger than the next, and each had its share of frogs chirping and singing away so early in the morning. I spent a good hour there, and had a great time enjoying the scent of the flowers and "communing" with nature. There are some very distinctive geodesic green houses which make the place look otherworldly, but they actually fit in real nice with the rest of the scenery.
Here's some of my favorite pics:
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| This place and the next pic were a block away from the gardens. |
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| People just care.... |
Since I had plenty of time before the museums opened up, I decided to take advantage of the great weather and go for a walk along the river again. By now I had figured out which trams I needed to take in order to get me where I needed to go. So I walked for a bit before I took the tram back to the river front.
Here are some things I encountered along the way:
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| A little element on a fountain... |
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| The Opera House |
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| A fountain (one of many) just out there... |
Eventually, I am back on the waterfront. It's still kind of quiet on the streets. I guess people are already at work or I'm still early for the morning rush hour. In any event, I had the place all to myself, and I pretty much just reviewed everything I did the day before only in better lighting conditions. The skies had opened up even though the weather people were predicting a cloudy day with some rain thrown in for good measure. You saw some of these yesterday, but here they are again:
As I approached the landing, I had a couple of questions, but there was no official there to ask. There were a couple of ladies sitting nearby, so I approached them and asked if they could help me. One of them spoke fair English and seemed eager to help in any way she could. The other lady did not speak English, and was told by my translator everything we were discussing so she wouldn't feel left out.
The ladies were not from Zurich but from nearby, and they were in town to sightsee. They had been all over the city as well including up to the higher parts that I never got to visit, so they knew a lot more than I did.
I asked if the ride was a round trip and was told that it was. Front that point forward, I was taken under the wing and given all kinds of good advice (where to go hiking, dancing, etc.) We talked until the boat arrived and then board together sitting nears each other.
There was no one selling tickets, so I just assumed that you paid on board. By now I had enough change to cover the 4.50 CHF - which sounded pretty reasonable for a one-hour ride. When I was asked for my ticket, I almost panicked, but the nice ladies assured me I could pay on board, and I offered to do so when the ticket taker came to me. I think everyone else had some kind of pass or had already been cleared for using this means of transportation. They showed their "tickets" and their ID or credit cards, and that's all they needed to do.
(As an aside, when I was visiting one of the museums, I was approached by a gentleman and his wife, and he asked me if anyone checked to see if people actually had tickets to ride things. He mentioned that no one had asked him yet to see his ticket. I replied that I had not been asked as well. But apparently random checks are made by the authorities, and you can pay a hefty fine if you don't have an appropriate ticket to ride public transportation.)
Anyway, I paid my fare, and off we went. Unfortunately, we were all inside the boat and it was surrounded by glass/plexiglass which was not real good for taking pictures, but I tried, and here is what I got, but for those of you who are interested, these are the people who run the 1-hour tour - https://www.zsg.ch/en/limmat-river-cruises.html:
And finally, at the end of the day, I went back to the train station to figure out my plan for getting to the airport tomorrow. I was able to get the info I wanted, but just as I was leaving, I noticed there was a "market" taking place, so I snapped these pics:
I think I'm going to stop there and call it a night. The next two places I visited have a lot of photos, and I want to make sure I do them justice.
I hope you enjoyed the pics - thanks to David Winston who helped me get them back from the ether.
Steve/
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