As I was unpacking from our 12 day European adventure (physically and mentally), I am beginning to understand more and more why there isn’t more information out there on traveling tips for taking toddlers or twins or multiple children to multiple destinations across the world. It’s because it’s stupid. Or because after you’ve survived it, your brain is mush and the last thing you are worried about is documenting the very reason you wanted to kill your children (or spouse) on too many occasions to count. But in all seriousness, on the last night of our trip, Cameron and I were able to step back and realize that we had gone too far on this one. It was too many moves, too many different accommodations, and maybe too many ‘must dos’ that were just to check a box and not enough wandering and immersing as we like to do. It was also too cold so that was a new element for us. Did we have a great trip and make a million new memories? Or course! Would we choose to do it all again the same way? That’s gonna be a no for me, dog.

Zurich. Oh Zurich. I’m sorry that I was least excited to visit you. I think I blame Rick Steves. He described Zurich as a great place to fly into and drive to the Alps from, but not really worth the stay. And Rick is usually so reliable… It was probably a good place to catch up on our sleep and recover from jetlag, but it was also more beautiful than I expected. Unfortunately, on the first day we were there when I was taken by the beautiful fall colors that were decorating the nearby foothills, I was also wanting very much to die due to the fact that I didn’t sleep even one minute on the flight. After fighting sleep with an extreme passion, Jackson was laying on me on the plane and kept sliding off or nearly kicking Cassidy. But really though, that child and his aversion to sleeping anywhere that is “not comfy like a bed” is something else. He was so tired and I tried to gentle parent him through it with logic, etc, for 5 minutes… 10 minutes…What even is time? He didn’t want to lay on a pillow on my lap. Would not even entertain the idea that it might be more comfortable than trying to put the pillow behind his head at a weird angle and sitting straight up. Out of desperation, I blurted out that I would give him a piece of candy tomorrow if he laid down. He laid down so fast, before the -dy came out of my mouth. Would have been so freaking annoying if I wasn’t so relieved. Cameron looked at me like what just happened and I started laughing so hard and was so delirious that I was in tears. I just love traveling internationally on long haul flights. But anyway, I was awake for 31 hours and I felt like trash and didn’t manage to take any photos of the beautiful fall colors on the foothills around us in Zurich as we ventured off to the Lindt chocolate factory. In fact, I took zero pictures the entire day. So please enjoy Cameron’s photos!

I highly recommend doing the Lindt factory tour while there, and despite my initial hesitation when I started to feel like garbage, it actually did a good job of perking everyone up. We even got a family picture that we felt was good enough to include in our Christmas card! There is an audio guide available, but as we found out at the Hans Christian Anderson museum in Denmark, it’s really not worth it at this point in our lives. It’s just added stress and to be completely honest, I really don’t care that much about where the chocolate comes from, just that it’s there to eat. The displays did a pretty good job of informing us without the extra audio explanation, and there were some neat little buildings and towns that lit up and kept us well enough entertained. When we came to the area with the Chocolate tastings, it was a bit chaotic. Somehow, we ended up on the heels of a high school age group that was doing their best to ingest as much of the melted chocolates as their hands and spoons would allow. Luckily, unlike myself, Cameron is not intimidated by teenagers and he got samples for all of us. There were 3 stations – white, milk, and dark chocolate. You take a spoon and spin the tap so to speak, to sample the liquid form of the truffles. At the next stop in the tasting area, there were machines of the unwrapped chocolate squares which made it really hard to get one chocolate out, especially in the middle of the crowds, let alone steal a bunch, which is probably what the machine is there to prohibit. You place your hand under each machine to collect a chocolate square. Then you must wait for the light to sense you so that it spits out a chocolate. The different flavors included sea salt and orange. We got a few pieces each but it was hard with the crowd that built up around them so we moved on. Next, I think there was then a room of wrappers and different looks of lindt chocolate through the years and from around the world, and then on to the counter where (under direct supervision) you are able to get one of each of the truffles in the large bowls. We each got around 8 truffles, I can’t remember for sure. I do know that it was enough to be difficult to hold while walking around without a backpack, because those are not allowed on the tour. Charlotte made a few people laugh by trying to smuggle hers in her tracksuit pockets. At the end of the tour, there is a machine on the wall that will send a square chocolate through a series of machines to drop it down into a compartment. The line was very long, and one of the girls had to go to the bathroom, so we left the boys to scan our tickets and get our chocolates (which they did not because the machine took too long, they only got 3). 

After our chocolate adventure, we finally got to go back to the hostel and get to sleep. That’s right, hostel. And I would stay there again! It was hard to find accommodations for 6 of us, without having a sofa bed. It was actually a really nice place to stay. It was outside of town but the public transportation worked well for us, being a few minutes walk from a well connected tram stop.  Zurich is expensive, this was affordable, and not terribly inconvenient. We had a private room with 2 twins next to each other, 4 bunk beds, and a plethora of cubbies, much to Jackson’s delight. There was also a restaurant and bar in the lobby, which in hindsight, I wish we’d taken advantage of instead of Cameron taking the kids to get dinner and coming back with a mostly cold pizza on night 2. We always forget that it’s ok to choose convenience sometimes. I also recently heard this advice on the With The Blinks travel podcast, and it really resonated – choose a good lunch out over having dinner out with small children. I don’t know why we have never thought more about doing this, but it is so true! We usually pack the day, grab lunch on the run or have more or a cheese, meat, bread kind of lunch while traveling, and then look for a restaurant for dinner. But what ends up happening time and time again is that we get back to the apartment or hotel so much later than we’d like for bedtime. Then the kids don’t want to get up and around in the morning, so our day starts late and the cycle continues until everyone is just exhausted. But if we’d choose dinner at the hotel restaurant or grab something to eat at the apartment, we might have more hope of a pleasant experience at lunch time, and possibly not have to sacrifice the culinary experience we are also seeking while traveling. So learn from our mistakes. 

On our first full day in Zurich, after taking far too long to get ready, eating some yogurt at the hostel and finally figuring out what and where we were doing things for the day, we went to visit the churches Cameron had picked out and the Christmas markets that were setup nearby. I didn’t know at the time how good we had it with the weather in Zurich but we are just not used to the cold anymore, and especially not used to preparing the kids for cold so we didn’t last very long at these markets. They weren’t as crowded as many of the others we visited were and we definitely saw colder temps later in our trip. We had some grilled sausages for lunch at the first market, tried some of the Schokokuss (chocolate kiss) treats that we ended up seeing at all of the markets across Paris and Brussels, and continued on to the second church and market. It started snowing while we were walking around there and trying to figure out if the carousel was free as it appeared (no) and the girls were complaining about their feet being cold so we ducked into the coop grocery/dept store to warm up. We rolled around that store forever, sisters with bare feet and us with the inability to make any decisions. We try to plan ahead for breakfast items so that we don’t have to eat out for that meal too, and because it is just a pain to find anything we actually want for breakfast at a restaurant. They advertise “american breakfast”, but really they have deli sandwich type things, maybe some eggs. I know this as bread and toppings from a trip to Poland in high school, never have I ever actually seen it at an actual American breakfast, Ok Europe? I don’t know where you’re getting your intel. We got some yogurt, bananas, a pastry, and some eggs because the hostel we were staying in had a guest kitchen as well. 

After the grocery store, we walked across the bridge to another church because Cameron loves a good church after all. We visited both the Fraumunster and the Grossmunster on our trip. They were both beautiful churches, and also a really good place to warm up. The Grossmunster was more difficult to access with a stroller because there were stairs to climb. We just had the girls climb the stairs and Cameron carried the stroller up, and then we parked it outside. There was also a Christmas market outside. I learned that most of these European Christmas markets look the same. No matter which country you are in, there will probably be some sausages, some stinky raclette cheese, gluwein, and Schokokusses.

We headed back to the hostel to rest and thaw out some more for a bit and then ventured out again to have fondue for dinner, which the kids did well with. It’s nice to see the glimmers of big kids. They were very excited to dip the bread, even though they had to wait forever for it to cool. One must have fondue if you visit Switzerland in the winter, but I wish we would have asked if we could share the portion for one or two people, even though we had 3 adults and 3 kids. This restaurant only served it with bread, and I think in the future we would have shared that and gotten some schnitzel or other main dishes to share as well. We got one schnitzel and ate way too much cheese. 

For our second day in Switzerland, we had considered visiting the Christmas markets in Basil. But despite all of my research on what else to do in Basel, I didn’t realize how expensive the train tickets were going to be for a “why not, we’re close by” kind of a venture. It would have cost us around 110-120 USD for each adult (I believe children 5 and under were free) to take the train to visit for the day, so we decided to skip that and visit the Christmas market that was in the Zurich train station and then did some wandering. What I really wanted to do in Switzerland was visit a dairy farm or cheese factory or something else that is so quintessentially Swiss. However, due to the fact that we visited in winter, many farms were closed to visitors or had short hours. We also didn’t rent a car and didn’t care to spend a good part of the day on a train, it just didn’t make sense. Therefore, we will just have to go back again in warmer weather. DARN IT. Fear not, the alps are still calling my name. 

After some more wandering and some burgers for lunch at Holy Cow (a solid Switzerland chain that wasn’t crazy expensive as many of the food options will be), we walked past the UBS Polybahn, which is a mountain cable car that connects the central square with the terrace by the main building of ETH Zurich. Jackson was very fascinated by the car going over the street and asked if we could go on it. It was included with our Zurich Card City Pass that we bought for transportation so it was an easy yes. We had to fold the stroller to get it on the cable car, which was no easy feat with all of the items stored on the bottom (as a side note, we are really ready to be done with a stroller now the the girls are 3 but also not done with the stroller because then that means 3 tiny humans on foot to control, as well as having to carry all of the stuff that we usually depend on the stroller for. I digress…). This adventure was very well worth it. The view of Zurich from the terrace is beautiful. The kids also got to spend some time using their own cameras to take pictures of the buildings and each other. And the ground. And the railing. And their shoes. I tell you, I am still putting off cleaning those memory cards. Such masterpieces await. 

From the observation deck, we walked a bit further up the hill to the Zoological Museum of Zurich. Trust me, this was so incredibly random and yet, the kids really liked it. I’m sure it had something to do with being a bit of a comfortable activity, just wandering around and looking at the animals in the displays,  pushing some buttons, and listening to the sounds on the phones. I thought this was all an accidental stop, but Cameron actually found this museum and thought it would be a good spot to warm up and spend some time letting the kids wander. Well done, Babe. When they’d seen enough taxidermy, we took the cable car down and stopped for a beer and some spaetzle at a pub. I think Cameron and I both spent more time tag teaming bathroom trips than drinking beer but sometimes it be like that. The kids got out their coloring books and used their soapbox contained crayons (still one of my favorite ideas, using a travel soap container for crayons. I’m sure it’s not an original idea, but I like to think so). It took some convincing and rebranding as Swiss mac n cheese but eventually, the kids really liked the spaetzle. It was getting late and we didn’t want to eat a meal here as we had plans to get a pizza for dinner and eat it in the lobby at the hostel, so off we went on the tram again. At our normal stop, Cheryl and I got off and walked back to start packing up to leave the next day.  Brave (or stupid) Cameron took all 3 children to go 2 more stops, pick up a pizza, and come back. I think they had a good little adventure, so maybe not so stupid. I was able to get most of the clothes rehomed in the suitcases in peace, I highly recommend. We usually do this after bedtime, but since we were all sharing a room, it wasn’t an option this time. And then we had pizza. If I had the chance to do it again, I would have ordered pizza at the bar in the hostel. We just aren’t very good at picking convenience, Don’t rule out the restaurant in the lobby of your hotel just because it may not be as authentic or an amazing meal. Like I said before, sometimes with kids you just need an easy dinner so you can get a decent bedtime. And sometimes that means hot dogs or lunch meat from the store, sometimes it means pizza in the lobby. The next morning, we navigated the Zurich train station once more, with multiple elevator and escalator trips. It is such a maze of going down to go across and back up to go back down. Pack your patience. We hopped on the train and we were off to our next destination. PARIS!

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