It was still dark when Bill Potter picked me up early Monday morning at 5:30 am to head to the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu where we flew to San Francisco, then transferred our luggage to Aer Lingus, where we enjoyed the business class lounge before boarding a luxurious business class flight to Dublin, Ireland. The 10-hour flight from SFO to DUB was at the grand cost of $11 (!) with the balance paid with credit card points. (Yes, I have joined the credit card points game!)

In Dublin, we had a long layover of 7 hours before flying to Zürich, putting our arrival at 9:50 pm. That meant that it took us more than 27 hours airport-to-airport to fly from Hawaii to Switzerland. Yikes!

Of course, I didn’t sleep a wink, even though we were flying in lie-flat business class seats—because my mind was busy playing music in my head.

It was just a few days before our departure that I realized I had booked the Hotel Neufeld in Zürich for only three nights when in reality we needed a hotel for five nights— and unfortunately the Neufeld was sold out both before and after the dates we needed! So I booked an airport hotel for our arrival. I finally lay down in my hotel room about 11:30 pm but was tossing and turning for at least 20-30 minutes before waking up at 4:15 am to start the day (Short night!) After breakfast, we took an Uber to the Hotel Neufeld where we dropped our luggage and met our long-time friend, Vreni Griffith, a former Honolulu resident (and Lutheran Church of Honolulu chorister!) but has returned to live in her native Zürich after 60+ years in Hawaii.

We took the tram to the main train station where we bought tickets for our upcoming day trips to Geneva and Lucerne and stopped at three churches, the first of which was the Christkatholische church which advertised an organ concert with trumpet, voice, and alphorn which we’ll try to attend on Friday night.

We also visited the Frauminster Church which is famous for its Chagall windows. Vreni told us, however, that there is only choral music on Sundays on special occasions, like Christmas or Easter.

We also made a stop at the Grossminster Church with its distinctive twin towers. Legend says this church was founded by Charlemagne, the “father of Europe”. The story tells that he discovered the graves of Zürich’s patron saints, Felix and Regula, and built a church on top.

We made a stop at Sprüngli, a famous chocolate shop which has been in business for over 185 years! Of course, we felt obliged to buy boxes for the folks back home!

Tomorrow we’ll visit Geneva, where we will visit the Temple des Eaux-Vives.

Before the trip, we were warned that it would be hot throughout most of our trip and yes, it’s warm but not unbearable. Thank goodness for fans!