Zurich Stopover with Kids

Our time in Zurich was much too short to accomplish anything. We arrived late in the evening and were leaving late afternoon the following day. I had a sponsorship meeting to attend and we were tired from our whirlwind trip. Instead of trying to check off must sees we opted to embrace the summer heat and hit some playgrounds with paddling pools.

We got off our train at Zurich’s main train station. We took a bus from the station to our hotel. All public transportation in Zurich is covered by the Swiss Rail Pass.

Hotel Coronado is outside of the city center, but perfectly located on several tram and bus lines. We were upstairs in a family suite. The room had four beds, giving everyone plenty of space. They even laid out baby towels for the little one.

Unfortunately the air conditioning in the room was not working properly and the sun had warmed up the room through the large windows. The staff brought up fans to keep us comfortable and we put everyone into a cold shower before bed. The hotel even comped our breakfast the next morning for our trouble. (The breakfast buffet was quite good. If you book directly with them they will give you a 50% discount on the price of the breakfast.)

Jeff headed out of the room and into the city center to complete the Rick Steves walking tour while I settled the kids. The summer gave him lots of light to see some of the city, and scout out a great playground.

He brought back a variety of pictures for me. It convinced me that Zurich needs its own trip where we can do a proper visit. I can totally see the boys running around this fountain!

Although we’ve seen so many river views on our trips this one is quite stunning.

Mom, Tots, Zurich has a bunch of great options for the city though if you have more time than we did. The next morning we were up and out. We had a quick meeting with the folks at Swiss Rail to tell them all about our trip. We let them know many of the opinions we have shared here. The kids got chocolate bars…they left very happy!

Then we hopped the train to Josefwiese, a lovely little park and playground. It’s adjacent to the viaduct, in a very trendy area of town. There was a small cafe just opening as we arrived.

The boys enjoyed the playground, but as the sun continued to beat down on us the little paddling pool called to us all.

We embraced our European selves and let the little boys paddle around in their undies. The Big Little refused and instead walked around holding his shorts up. The water was cool and it was all quite enough to beat the heat.

Our plan didn’t make a ton of sense, but we hopped a train back across town to walk to the playground Jeff had found the night before during his city walking tour. It was all such a whirlwind I didn’t even make a note of where this playground was. Newly Swissed has a great list of Zurich playgrounds though that all look much more impressive than this little one we found.

This time we caught a tram back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed out to the airport. The kids got the best seat on the tram. You can sit in this back area and enjoy watching all the traffic behind you. The area has four seats and plenty of room for luggage. The perfect way to end our transportation trip.

We couldn’t have asked for a better trip. Switzerland is the perfect country to explore by rail. We were all still quite happy though to return to the Netherlands. Our Big Little saw the boats and canals below and sighed “I can’t wait to be home.”

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Swiss Rail provided me with a first class rail pass in exchange for a review of our family’s adventures riding the rails of Switzerland. As always all opinions are my own. 

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