Annecy and Zurich

I am currently traveling with my parents and aunt and right now we're in Cinque Terre (Monterosso) and have already been to Lucerne, Mürren, and Venice. It has been a great time, but for now I'd like to talk about Annecy and Zurich, the two cities I saw just before meeting my family. I mainly want to talk about my couchsurfing experiences, so I dedicate this post to my hosts, Elisabeth from Annecy and  Sulalit from Zurich.

I'll start off by introducing Elisabeth, my couchsurfing host in Annecy. I don't know how to thank her enough, she truly went above and beyond. I now have a new idea of "best case scenario" for a couchsurfing host! This is a picture of with Lake Annecy behind us. The actual city is on the far end of this picture, she drove me all the way up the mountain for this amazing view!

Here's a photo by another small town on Lake Annecy. Elisabeth actually drove me around the entire lake as well as up the mountain.

Here's the lake in the evening, normally it looks much more blue than this. This was right after we had a picnic on the edge of the lake for dinner. She cooked some of the best food I've ever had... 3 meals a day!! (for the 2 days/nights I was there).

 A picture of the actual city. It has several canals through the old part of town. 

A few more canals. They split up and reconverge several times. Where I'm standing in this picture is filled with fresh outdoor markets just about every morning. 

Where all the canals reconverge

 

 The beginning of the canals

I actually spent about an hour and a half in Geneva between trains to Zurich from Annecy. So here's a picture of the Jet d'Eau!

 

I finally made it to Zurich on the 30th where my other host Sulalit met me. He's actually from India and is currently a research student in Zurich, so I stayed in his dorm room. Even though my stay was brief, he proved to be a great host. I definitely learned a thing or two about Indian culture while I was there.

 This was probably one of my favorite things in Zurich: Indian food that Sulalit cooked just for me! He loves cooking (and is good at it!). He taught me how to eat like an Indian which meant sitting on the floor and using only your hands to eat!

Here I am with a statue by Zurich's lake.  

And here's the city of Zurich! I didn't have very much time to explore it, and the little time I had was at night. 

One of the few good night pictures. You can see one of Zurich's many beautiful clocktowers. It's no wonder that the Swiss have the reputation of being very punctual!

Well this sums up only about 3 days, from May 28th to June 1st. I hope I can post something soon about my time with my family, I've seen so many amazing things since we started traveling together!! But I just want to thank Elisabeth and Sulalit again for their amazing hospitality. They set a great example for couchsurfers!