zurich

hopped to switzerland for one last burst of fire pre-baby. got clearance to fly (BA flies till week 36!) and it was all systems go. short flight (90min to zurich) and was feeling atypically energetic. flew outta london city which i much prefer to heathrow because it's smaller, more efficient, shorter queues if there's even one at immigration and less hanging about. kinda equidistant by public transport too. zurich is always good, had a bonus night there in august (?) after a missed flight heh so had been recently but jumped at the chance to stay in old town and go to bellvue christmas market.

funny story there - literally walked into A, a travel journalist i'd met in ecuador april 2013! we'd stayed at mashpi lodge in the cloud forest at the same time and hit it off. he was there on assignment writing about the cocoa industry and we tried to meet up when he was in singers but missed each other. hadn't seen him since ecuador nor communicated in years but when i saw him it kinda clicked. then i thought about how he'd said his husband was swiss and they were based in zurich so it suddenly all made sense and i said hello. he was surprised but remembered me (or pretended to at least haha) and we caught up briefly. small world and hm funny what the brain remembers ie a face from years ago vs what i ate for breakfast yesterday.

enjoyed the market so much we went back the next day in daylight for more ethnic goodies