Zürich, Day 7

Our flight home was at 4.00 pm, which gave enough time for another pleasant morning in the still glorious weather we'd been blessed with for our entire stay. Martin kept on stressing that we'd been remarkably lucky, and that we were seeing Zürich at its absolute best. This was my third time in the city, having been there previously in 1978 and 1998. This visit confirms its position as one of the most wonderful places I've been. In terms of these trips away with the Music Group, both Dermot and I agree that this has been the best yet (and we've been before to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Dresden & Leipzig, and Budapest). Everything combined to make this a most wonderful experience: having Martin there with his local knowledge and his generous invitation to brunch at his place and the various car trips he arranged was a great help; the weather was fabulous, the city is brilliant, public transport is fantastically good, the standard of restaurants is extraordinarily high, and the musical element was top-notch.

Carl and I began with a champagne breakfast, then made our way back down towards the lake, originally hoping to stop for lunch in Restaurant zum Storchen. Unfortunately, we would have needed a reservation for the riverside terrace which we would have liked to experience, so we then thought of going back to Pier 7 where we'd been on Monday evening, but that wasn't yet open. Once again, though, just as had been the case on Sunday night, we ended up better off not getting in where we'd hoped to, since we took our lunch in the beautiful setting of the Terrasse restaurant in a tree-dotted garden at the top of Limmatquai. We couldn't have wished for a better spot for our final meal. Once again, the food was excellent.

We finished in perfect time to get back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and get across to the main railway station to meet Dermot and get the train to the airport. We were back in Dublin shortly after 6.00 pm. So, a great trip, and a wonderful experience.

I've back-blipped the whole thing, beginning here. Now that I have things here up to date (the internet connection in the hotel was very poor -- the only bad thing about the trip, really), hopefully I'll manage to catch up with all you other blippers and get back into commenting mode.