Zurich lake in autumn

We try to take one day in a week off from our garden and house renovation duties to relax and regain some energy for the upcoming week. Usually, we would just go to the city for a walk, get some good food or meet friends.

Where are the days when we would just pack our bags and leave spontaneously to the mountains or a spa resort... These days a day trip to Zurich must be enough! Don't get me wrong though. I'm very grateful for everything I have, but sometimes I'm so tired that I dream of the days before we bought the house.

It doesn't look like it, but we had a beautiful sunny day on Sunday. In the morning it was so nice that we couldn't stay at home. We jumped in the car and drove to Zurich. We enjoyed walking around the city and in the afternoon we headed in the direction of the lake. By then it was cloudy again, but it didn't matter as we had a few hours of sunshine before. I treasure these moments as sunshine in autumn is something that we don't see often where we live.

Let's go!

The promenade along the lake is designed to be pretty all year around. There are gardeners taking good care of plants and trees, and they also prepare flower arrangements for each season.

This is one of the best visited places in Zurich, and there are many people walking along the promenade every day regardless the weather. The Swiss like to be outside, and here they can enjoy the feeling of being out of the city even though it is literally in the heart of it. When my family visited us in summer they were surprised to see so many people jogging and exercising here. My sister was even inspired to start jogging again, however I don't know if she really started or not.

Every time we come to Zurich we make sure to go on a walk along the lake...

Even though it is already really cold there are some people who still enjoy water sports. We saw many sailing boats, some paddleboarders and even some eFoilers. I have only seen eFoiling on TV before, so it was interesting to watch them. It looked so difficult to stay on the board and their falls seemed uncontrolled and hard. I'm not even going to talk about the freezing water temperature. They seemed determined and kept jumping back on the boards.

Zurich lake is one of the most visited lakes in Switzerland. It is 40km long with Zurich on one and Rapperswil on the other end. Along the lake you can find mane charming places with beautiful views.

The eastern shore is called The Gold coast because it gets a lot of sunshine, hence it is much more expensive than The Silver coast. Many celebrities choose to purchase a property along the lake not only because of the views and exclusivity, but also because of the favourable tax rates. We can't afford a property here, so at least we come to enjoy the atmosphere 😊

There were so many birds at the lake! We had to be careful as they were flying above our heads and we wanted to avoid any 'accidents'. Many people were feeding them with stale bread which makes me crazy as a quick online search would teach them that stale bread is not good for them and they should rather feed them some seeds, lettuce or grapes.

There were so many of them, so get ready for some birds spam...

Here we can see some kind of a bird corporate event 😊

So determined to land and catch that fish...

For some reason I have always thought that seagulls only live at the sea. When I saw them here for the first time I was stunned. I would have not been surprised to find them at a lake in a country with coastline, but in Switzerland? Soon I understood that they apparently live everywhere. They also don't care about people and come very close. I even saw some videos where they were stealing food directly out of someone's hands.

Look at those colours! It's so easy to forget about the cold when you're in a place like this one...

The Swiss Alps in the back must have had the perfect weather conditions that day. The ski resorts will open their season soon, and I hope that it will be much better than last year when many of them had to close early because of the warm weather. We don't ski, but I love hiking in the snow, and can't wait for the season to start.

If this doesn't scream 'autumn' then I don't know that does...

Work of a clever garden designer...

My dream is that my garden would look similar to this one day...

All autumn colours on one tree...

I can't find it anymore, but there is (somewhere) a flying frisbee on this photo. I was watching this dad with his son playing frisbee for a few moments. They were so cute. It was nice to see how they spend some quality time together...

The days are getting shorter and it was already getting dark, so we started to walk back towards the city...

I love Zurich in the evening...

Even though there are so many people walking around at any time during the day, the evenings are somehow calming. And before Christmas it is magical. This week the Christmas markets will be officially open all around the city, and there will be Christmas lights everywhere, beautiful Christmas trees, many stalls selling mulled wine, roasted chestnuts and other winter foods. I can't wait to experience it again!

See you next time...