We left a chilly Chur and caught a train to Zurich – what a scenic trip it was.  We passed some huge lakes and then came in past the Zurich Lake – beautiful!  Finding the place to leave our luggage in Zurich Station which is apparently the biggest and busiest station in Europe proved to be a little more challenging than we thought, but after asking for assistance twice, we found it, and hired a locker for each of our cases.

Off we went on our short walking tour of Zurich.  A few interesting facts that we found in Zurich:

• All men go to church in a black suit with a dark tie and white shirt
• We did not see a single lady heading for church
• Most shops in Zurich do not open on a Sunday

The parts we saw of Zurich were very Swiss – lots of Swiss flags everywhere, typical Swiss architecture – very interesting.  Walking along the river, looking at all the old buildings was great, and when the church bells started ringing from all the surrounding churches, it was a cacophony of sound! We finished our walking tours, and still had some time, so found the Lindt shop – sadly the Lindt Factory was too far for a visit.  However the Lindt shop was a real treat – all sorts of Lindt choccies that we don’t get in SA.  We only bought a choccie to share and a BIG bag to little Lindt chocs.  Very disciplined we were!

At lunchtime we caught our double decker high speed train to Paris.  My word, but these trains moved – they tell you your speed and the fastest we saw was 312km per hour, but it can go as high as 360 km per hour.  It was a pretty route via Basel.

On arrival in Paris we needed to find the Metro and head for Monte Matre where we are staying.  There were stairs everywhere and very few escalators, so we carried our cases uphill and down dale.  We were pooped!  Anyhow, we got to our apartment and followed the instructions we had been sent to get the key out of the key safe.  Only problem was that the key safe is in the back of a postbox so is very dark!  We tried and tried, but could not get this safe to open.  William tried to whats app the owner, but she did not respond.  Eventually we realised that she had given us 1 digit wrong in the code and we got it open.  We followed the rest of the instructions, which ended with “you need to climb the steps to the apartment on the top floor”.  Well, there are 129 worn, narrow, spiral wooden steps to our apartment.  Nowhere was this declared.  We battled to get our suitcase up the stairs, let alone 129 of them.  William carried both part of the way, as I was battling with the weight and being a little height challenged, my huge suitcase was a little too much.  After much heaving and huffing and puffing, we got to our tiny apartment, and both collapsed on our bed to catch our breath.  (We have subsequently checked our booking papers and nowhere was this disclosed!)  The apartment does have a beautiful view of Sacre Coeur – a beautiful church.

Once we had settled in and revived a little we climbed all the way down the steps and walked around Monte Matre.  We did not have the energy to head up the steps to Sacre Couer, as there were many steps, so we walked on the flat, and found the Moulin Rouge, and bought supper just across the road while we waited for it to get a little darker, to see Moulin Rouge by night.

We then wandered home – and climbed our steps and fell into bed.