Zurich

Sights of St. Gallen and Zurich

/ Karina Pinella / 9 Comments

Home base: Zurich

Image: Google Maps

St. Gallen is another town near Zurich easily traveled by train. One of the world’s oldest libraries, containing unique, early medieval writings, is located in St. Gallen.  With a collection of 170,000 books from a period of over 1,000 years, the Abbey Library was named a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 1983. Built between 1755 and 1767, the library had belonged at one time to an abbey founded in 719. A few years later, the Benedictine order of monks became residents in 747. The monastery flourished from the 9th to 11th centuries, as an influential cultural and scientific center of the West. Today, the Benedictines are gone, and the monastery has long since been dissolved. Yet the Abbey Library remains as a significant educational institution from the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, no picture-taking was allowed inside the library.

The abbey complex

Other sights in St. Gallen

After spending the morning at St. Gallen, we returned to Zurich to enjoy more sights.

We began the evening with a cruise. This time from Bürkliplatz, located on the other end the city, on Lake Zurich.

Spellbound in Switzerland

/ Karina Pinella / 19 Comments

I recently returned from a wonderful vacation in Switzerland, where I was spellbound at every turn. Traveling by high-speed rail, I used three beautiful cities as my home base, often exploring other sights and stops nearby.  This is the beginning of a series of selected locales I had the pleasure of enjoying during my stay there.

First Stop: Zurich

Image: Google Maps

We hit the ground running, so many sights/sites to see. Started at the Kunsthaus, Zurich’s world-class art museum, which houses the largest collection of Swiss-born Alberto Giacometti’s work, among so many other well-renowned artists/sculptors:

Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Oskar Kokoschka, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, Francesco Napoletano, Jacopo Palma Vecchio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Roos, Ferdinand Hodler, Johan Christian Dahl, to name a few!

We ended our day at a lovely restaurant called Raclette Stube in Old Town. The restaurant is known for its cheese fondues. I had the Fondue Fribourgeoise, which is half Gruyère, half Vacherin cheese with wine and Kirsch, served with bread and potatoes, along with a side order of cold, sliced sausage from Vaud.  And, the evening just began . . .