A dinner with friends and an (unplanned) extra day

We arrived back in Zurich in time to meet up with some friends for dinner. We had returned our rental car so we took the train from the airport to the main train station in Zurich. We had the SBB app and the Half Fare card which were easy to use and we managed the train journey just fine. Our problem was in figuring out where our friends' hotel was located in relation to the station, but we soon had it figured out and were able to enjoy dinner with them.  

We returned to our hotel, the Radisson Blu at the airport, to figure out our strategy for the following day. We did not realize until 48 hours before the flight that the airline had changed our flight to one day later than I had orignially booked. In looking back through their emails to me about flight changes and layover changes, I did eventually find the email that mentioned other changes including the additional day. I called the airline reservations line and the young man was very nice but couldn't get us conveniently rebooked to where we needed to go on such short notice. Sooo we had an extra day. We have been to Zurich previously so we wanted to do something outside the city. We finally decided to take a bus tour to the Rheinfalls and the village of Stein am Rhein.

 The next morning we took the train to the city again and tried to orient ourselves more successfully than the day before. We had to ask for help from a young man in the ticket office who nicely gave us directions to the tour bus area. Once we arrived and everyone was on the bus, we left for the Rheinfalls. I have to admit that I had put the falls on my "B" list of things to see, but the sheer volume of water going over the falls was pretty impressive. Even though the falls are not high, the volume and force of the water make up for it. We walked up and down the stairs to the various viewing platforms and even had time for a quick beverage before boarding the bus again. 

The medeival village of Stein am Rhein was next on the tour. This is a charming village with lots of half-timbered houses and beautiful wall painting on the exterior of the buildings. Our tour guide pointed out some of the details of various buildings and then let us explore on our own. We wandered about looking at all the shops and buildings before stopping at Il Gelato. Our tour guide said it was the best gelato in town and one look told me the banana gelato was handmade. The owner said he makes it himself from fresh bananas. I could tell it was handmade because it wasn't yellow, but kind of a gray/beige and if you look closely you can see the tiny black seeds. A tour guide in Rome gave me that tip years ago. My husband and I took our gelato to a bench by the river to relax and enjoy the view before boarding the bus for our return to Zurich. We packed our bags and got everything ready for our flight the next day.

 The next morning we walked the 2 minutes to the terminal from our hotel (so convenient) and went to check in and drop our bags. The Zurich airport is unlike other airports I have been to, as the airlines share check in desks and remove their signage at the end of their shift and then replace it when they arrive the next day. In the meantime, other airlines take over that desk and put up their signage. Maybe this happens in other airports but this was the first time I had seen it done. So we arrived at Check-in 2, level 2, row 1 which is exactly where Delta check-in should have been, but the only desks were Singapore Air and Qatar Air! Eventually other travelers arrived for check-in with Delta but the desk agents didn't arrive and start checking people in until almost 2 hours before the flight. We still had to go through security and another passport check so we felt a bit rushed at this point in spite of arriving early. We finally made it to the gate area and bought a sandwich to eat since we had skipped breakfast in favor of getting to the aiport early. 

Our flight was delayed taking off by 20 minutes which left us 1-1/2 hours to deplane, go through customs and make it to our gate at JFK airport. The customs area at JFK was jammed full of people. We have Global Entry but only one person was working that line so it still took a while to get through. We made it to our gate just as the plane was boarding, thank goodness. We had one more connecting flight in order to get home so we couldn't miss our plane in New York or we'd be spending the night in Utah and trying to get home the next day.  That would have added two extra days to the trip and my husband had to work so we had to make that next connection. Finally we landed at our home airport at 12:30am, found our car in the parking garage where our kids had left it, and headed home to finally fall into bed.