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National Geographic
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
How to spend the perfect day in Switzerland's underrated financial capital
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). Switzerland's largest city, straddling the Limmat River and facing the pristine shores of Lake Zurich, has long been best known for its financial clout and Swiss efficiency. But these days its cultural scene is also booming, with everything from 'blackout' dining concepts to fashion co-ops set beneath railway arches. Here's how best to take in the city in just 14 hours. 7am: Swim at sunrise at Seebad Utoquai The combination of the lake's glassy water and this swimming club has made such an impression on locals that it's kept them rising at dawn for more than 130 years. The Seebad's two-floor wooden bathhouse debuted in 1890 with curtained changing rooms, ladders directly into the lake and diving boards, and it's been eulogised ever since by bathers and those who'd rather soak up the sun on the timber terraces. Alternatively, Frauenbad at Stadthausquai is an art nouveau cabana exclusively for women's swimming (both April to October only). In the lidos along the Limmat River, bathers don swimwear produced from upcycled plastic found in the city's waterways. 8am: Breakfast at the Odeon A home for the city's gay community long before the first Swiss laws legalising same-sex relationships were passed in 1942, Cafe Odeon is a Viennese-style coffee house par excellence. Expect to see eggs served in a wide variety of styles, including, as this is Zurich, in the form of truffle omelettes with a side of Champagne. 10am: Go to a gallery Zurich is home to around 50 museums and around double the number of art galleries. Certainly the most generous with the big names is the Kunsthaus. Plenty of highlights on display come from the likes of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, while Switzerland is represented by Alberto Giacometti and the world's largest collection of Dada, the absurd counterculture art movement born nearby at cafe-gallery Cabaret Voltaire on Spiegelgasse. 12pm: Explore under the bridges The railway arches of the city's Industriequartier once housed hundreds of stonemasons and mechanics. These days, they survive as Im Viadukt, a future-focused co-op of fashion shops, restaurants, venues and a food market replete with bars and takeaway counters. This is where to go for a classic Swiss lunch, whether you're looking for Alpine picnic supplies (typically cheese, pickles and breads) or some bratwurst. 3pm: Get a chocolate fix There's an extraordinary array of chocolate ateliers in Zurich, but among the best are Läderach, Max Chocolatier and truffle-specialist Sprüngli on Bahnhofstrasse. These days, macarons are the speciality, while ruffled chocolate nests and bite-sized batons come topped with gold-leaf. 5pm: Time for a sky-high cocktail It's worth seeing the city and all of its church spires from the rooftops. One of the best viewpoints is at 1838, an exquisite destination bar atop the Mandarin Oriental Savoy that snuggles up to the Fraumünster and overlooks Paradeplatz, a square that's perenially popular with locals. On a clear day, the entire lake and the Alps to the south can also be seen on the horizon. An Aperol spritz or Eichhof lager will help temper any giddiness. 7pm: Eat in the dark Switzerland helped pioneer many life-changers — wristwatches, the world wide web, instant coffee. It's also the home of the first restaurant in the dark. The blackout dining concept was created in 1999 by a non-profit foundation and born to create jobs for the city's visually impaired people. The focus isn't just the surprise three- or four-course menu (it could be spätzle, lake fish, Swiss beef), but on fostering conversations. 10pm: Go bar-hopping If anywhere has an edge in Zurich, it's Langstrasse, a long street of late-night bars and clubs in the heart of the red-light district. Resistant to change, it's the city at its most unbuttoned, with Bar 63 and Ole Ole the most popular venues. For something classier, albeit with negronis on tap, try Bar Sacchi in trendy Lochergut. Getting there & around British Airways, EasyJet, Edelweiss Air and Swiss fly to Zurich from UK airports including Edinburgh, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester and Stansted. The fastest train route from London St Pancras International to Zurich takes 6hr55m, involving a change of stations in flight time: 1h45m. It's easy to explore Zurich's attractions on foot or by using the efficient, safe and clean public transport system. You can get a tram, train, bus or ferry at most times of day with ease. A 24-hour travelcard for use in central Zurich costs CHF9.20 (£8.30). Trams and buses run from 6am to 1am. When to go Zurich is worth visiting year-round. Winter and early spring see cold days with snow-daubed hills and ice skating — with average temperatures around 4-6C — while summer ushers in averages of 25-28C, which means open lidos and the bulk of the city's festivals. Autumn, cooler at around 15C, is for the Zurich Wine Festival, held every October with tastings, masterclasses and networking sessions. Where to stay 25hrs Hotel Langstrasse. Doubles from CHF152 (£140). La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich. Doubles from CHF540 (£490). More info Planet Switzerland. £16.99 How to do it Switzerland Travel Centre offers two nights in Zurich in a three-star hotel, including a 72-hour Zurich Card for transport and discounts, from £230 per person, B&B. Excludes flights. This story was created with the support of Zurich Tourism Published in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Playing Hide-and-Seek With Cézanne in His Hometown
'He didn't know what he was doing,' his wife recalled. 'So odd, so timid,' was Claude Monet's judgment: 'a victim of too much self-doubt.' 'A sphinx,' his childhood best friend, Émile Zola, deemed him. In life, Paul Cézanne was tentative. (Though commanding, too: He spoke so loudly that he made dishes rattle, the painter Mary Cassatt observed.) His paintings followed suit, with such deliberate hesitancy in their brushstrokes that they seemed to destroy the possibility of objective representation. To Braque, Picasso, Duchamp and other 20th-century students of relativity, he was a prophet of doubt. It's funny, then, that he should be the subject of Europe's art pilgrimage of the summer. With the aim of knowing Cézanne better, thousands are heading to Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne's hometown in the South of France, for 'Cézanne 2025,' a regionwide tourist drive with programming running through the fall. It centers on 'Cézanne at Jas de Bouffan,' a smartly chosen exhibition of some 130 Cézanne works, most of them on loan, at the Musée Granet, the former drawing school where he first studied art. The show coincides with a partial reopening of his family retreat west of town. With its aggressive branding, its T.S.A.-style lines and crowds, and its endless commercial spinoffs in the town's shops and galleries, 'Cézanne 2025' offers passing tourists the promise of a scavenger hunt between the works in the museum and the many haunts of Provence's biggest painter. For students of art, though, the question is whether paintings are enriched by an understanding of the environment in which they are made. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Winnipeg Free Press
09-07-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
In praise of wandering and pondering
Opinion I did a doubletake when I read the Free Press headline on July 2: Cellphones mark 40 years in Canada. Surely that '40' was a typo? Has it really been that long since we started feeling fettered by our landlines and began opting for free-range calling? And then I thought of my own early work experience in the late '80s, working the reception desk of a swanky real estate office in Toronto whose well-heeled sales representative were early adoptors of clunky car phones. Pam Frampton photo Life imitating art: an array of water lilies conjures up paintings by Claude Monet. I remember the thrill of taking those first calls from people in moving vehicles and wondering how the heck we had ever lived without such convenience. Of course, back then, only the well-heeled could afford them. It would be 20 years more before a boss handed me my first iPhone and told me to kiss my personal life goodbye. Now that cellphones have become ubiquitous in our lives, it's hard to fathom how we ever got by in the before-times — those old-fashioned, pre-app days when ATMs were shiny newfangled things and you had to actually speak to someone at a restaurant to make a reservation. Now, I love the convenience of cellphone technology as much as the next person — online banking is the perfect tool for impatient people like me, and language apps make it dead simple to do a lesson whenever you want. But cellphones are designed to trigger interaction. How long can you set your phone down before a notification ping or just pure conditioning has your sweaty palm compulsively reaching out to pick it up again? Not all of our interactions with our phones feel beneficial. Is it truly a valuable tool that helps us, or have we become shackled to it? Is mindlessly scrolling through yawning cat videos, caustic memes and cheesy ads for products of dubious quality and utility really a good use of our time? After a warm summer rain one day last week, I set out for a walk, my cellphone in my pocket — but only to silently record my progress on the Steps app. I walked through Pleasantville in the east end of St. John's, past empty fields where American troops lived in barracks more than 80 years ago, and on down to the walking trail ringing Quidi Vidi Lake. I was thinking about cellphones and how much they have changed our lives, how they get us hooked on a steady diet of information through social media — not all of it credible, accurate or even real; how they groom us into thinking that we cannot do without them. And then I switched that train of thought off and took a good look around me. Saw the rain droplets on the end of spruce branches like beads of mercury. Touched them and felt the warm, clean water run down my wrist. Breathed in the trees' woodsy scent. Saw patterns on the wet bark. Heard small birds singing eloquent songs about the splendour of summer, the freshness of things after a downpour — songs that sounded too big for their little feathered bodies. The trail was a parade route for a convoy of snails, invigorated by the wetness, moving in single file, eyestalks outreaching. I wondered if the crushed stone of the path hurt their soft bodies; remembered reading somewhere that their behaviour suggests they feel pain, and that they have been observed obsessively grooming an injured area of their body like a dog does. I stopped to talk to a marmalade cat that was lolling on a picnic table, half-asleep, eyes squinting to acknowledge my presence. 'You were up too late last night hunting mice, weren't you?' I scolded. 'Now you need to have a nap in the middle of the morning.' The cat yawned luxuriously. I continued on, stopping to smell the wild roses that grow in profusion along the trail. Touched their satiny petals, inhaled their perfume. My progress was impeded at one point by a procession of black and white and brown ducks, their noisy chatter reminiscent of parishioners and clergy animated by the end of a subdued vestry meeting. A lone frog was singing a monotonous a cappella tune in the section of lake afloat with lily pads, their yellow globes just beginning to open to reveal the petals within. Bull-head lilies they're called by some in these parts, but Nuphar variegatum has other, more poetic names as well: spatterdock, spadderdock, brandy-bottle. Seeing them, I understand Monet's fascination. They stand stock-still on their leafy platforms but look as if they could suddenly move en masse in an aquatic murmuration. Tuesdays A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world. It felt good to think freely, to give myself space and time to breathe and see and smell and feel and hear, without prompts or pings or swipes or a steady stream of curated dreck. Wandering aimlessly, pondering willy-nilly. It's a pastime I highly recommend. Pam Frampton lives in St. John's. Email pamelajframpton@ X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @ Pam Frampton Pam Frampton is a columnist for the Free Press. She has worked in print media since 1990 and has been offering up her opinions for more than 20 years. Read more about Pam. Pam's columns are built on facts, but offer her personal views through arguments and analysis. Every column Pam produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Malay Mail
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
The Seine star of the summer again in Paris
PARIS, July 6 — The Seine, which played a starring role in the 2024 Paris Olympics, again takes centre stage in the capital this summer with the opening of three bathing sites. Here are things you need to know about the storied waterway. From Vikings to D-Day From wars to revolutions, most of the seismic events in French history have played out along the banks of the 775-kilometre-long Seine. The Vikings travelled up the river on their longboats in the 9th century, torching Rouen in 841 and later besieging Paris. In 1944, Allied forces bombed most of the bridges downstream of Nazi-occupied Paris to prepare the ground for the D-Day landings which led to the liberation of western Europe. Monet's muse French impressionist master Claude Monet spent his life painting the river from different viewpoints. Hollywood starlet Doris Day, British rock singer Marianne Faithfull and US crooner Dean Martin all sang about it. And during one of her raging rows with her songwriter partner Serge Gainsbourg, late singer and actress Jane Birkin jumped into it. The Seine has long inspired artists, authors, musicians... as well as legions of couples who have sworn their undying love by chaining personalised padlocks to the bridges of Paris. Barging ahead Taking a cruise on the Seine is on most visitors' bucket lists, but the Seine is also a working river, with around 20 million tonnes of goods transported on France's second-busiest river each year—the equivalent of about 800,000 lorry-loads. Bathing again Swimming in the Seine, which was all the rage in the 17th century when people used to dive in naked, has been banned since 1923 for health and safety reasons. France has invested heavily to ensure the water will be safe for the public to swim in this summer. Days before the 2024 Olympic Games began Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo dove into the Seine in front of journalists from around the world. The open-water swimming events and triathlon took place there. From July 5, the public will be able to access three bathing sites at bras Marie in the heart of the historic centre, the Grenelle district in the west of Paris, as well as Bercy in the east. As the water is quite shallow people will not be allowed to dive in. Mind the python Cleaning up the Seine also has its macabre side. Between 50 and 60 corpses a year are fished out of the water. Dredging of the river in recent years has also come up with voodoo dolls with pins stuck in them, a (dead) three-metre-long python, an artillery shell dating back to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the trophy of the Six Nations rugby tournament, dropped during a victory party on the river after France's win in 2022. — AFP
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Seine star of the summer again in Paris
The Seine, which played a starring role in the 2024 Paris Olympics, again takes centre stage in the capital this summer with the opening of three bathing sites. Here are things you need to know about the storied waterway. - From Vikings to D-Day - From wars to revolutions, most of the seismic events in French history have played out along the banks of the 775-kilometre-long Seine. The Vikings travelled up the river on their longboats in the 9th century, torching Rouen in 841 and later besieging Paris. In 1944, Allied forces bombed most of the bridges downstream of Nazi-occupied Paris to prepare the ground for the D-Day landings which led to the liberation of western Europe. - Monet's muse - French impressionist master Claude Monet spent his life painting the river from different viewpoints. Hollywood starlet Doris Day, British rock singer Marianne Faithfull and US crooner Dean Martin all sang about it. And during one of her raging rows with her songwriter partner Serge Gainsbourg, late singer and actress Jane Birkin jumped into it. The Seine has long inspired artists, authors, musicians... as well as legions of couples who have sworn their undying love by chaining personalised padlocks to the bridges of Paris. - Barging ahead - Taking a cruise on the Seine is on most visitors' bucket lists, but the Seine is also a working river, with around 20 million tonnes of goods transported on France's second-busiest river each year -- the equivalent of about 800,000 lorry-loads. - Bathing again - Swimming in the Seine, which was all the rage in the 17th century when people used to dive in naked, has been banned since 1923 for health and safety reasons. France has invested heavily to ensure the water will be safe for the public to swim in this summer. Days before the 2024 Olympic Games began Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo dove into the Seine in front of journalists from around the world. The open-water swimming events and triathlon took place there. From July 5, the public will be able to access three bathing sites at bras Marie in the heart of the historic centre, the Grenelle district in the west of Paris, as well as Bercy in the east. As the water is quite shallow people will not be allowed to dive in. - Mind the python - Cleaning up the Seine also has its macabre side. Between 50 and 60 corpses a year are fished out of the water. Dredging of the river in recent years has also come up with voodoo dolls with pins stuck in them, a (dead) three-metre-long python, an artillery shell dating back to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the trophy of the Six Nations rugby tournament, dropped during a victory party on the river after France's win in 2022. frd-jmy/giv
