Cycling: Grüningen, Zürich – Switzerland
If you followed our Instagram stories, you know that I’ve gotten myself a new bicycle. I thought instead of spending my money on public transportation, I could use it to buy a new bike to get around. It’s also an opportunity to kick myself to work out. Buying a bike has been on my mind a long time but I finally did something about it. As I was browsing bikes online, I saw my current bike and fell in love. The bike has everything I wanted,- size, number of gears and price except for one downside – I have to assemble the bike myself. So the bike came and I was lucky because Herr Hallo & his daddy guided me with the assembly. It was not that difficult actually. I only needed to install the front tire, the seat and the handlebar.
I have a few places on my list that I want to visit as soon as I have a bicycle. The first place is Schloss Grüningen. We drove passed Grüningen a few hundred times but I’ve never step foot on that place. If you’ve driven through Grüningen, you will see the beautiful timber frame on both sides of the road with beautiful little artistic shops. Rumours has it that many artists live in this village and I can tell that might be true.
On Sunday it was the second day as owner of a brand new bicycle. The first thing we do is to take the bike for a spin towards my dream village – Grüningen which is one of the neighboring village from we were live. We rode out to Grüningen Botanischer Garten. We don’t know anything about this botanical garden until we looked it up online. I must be on a botanical garden streak because this is the second Botanical garden I visited in a week! I should consider to do a botanical garden review. 🙂
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Our cycling route
Butterflies & Lavenders
Blooms
Heart of a flower.
GRÜNINGEN BOTANISCHER GARTEN
We started our unprofessional cycling tour after brunch. We needed to recharge our batteries. We want to avoid the main road as much as possible so we cycled through Lützelsee to Grüningen. Thank God my bike has 21 gears! Switzerland is definitely not flat but you don’t quite feel the steepness when you are driving or even strolling on foot. Even with 21 gears, it was hard. There were times, like Goddamnit! I wanted to get down the bike and simply push it up the hill. Going downhill was nice and scary. I was afraid to speed especially on gravel trails. I pressed on the brake and my bike skidded. I almost crashed because I was a coward. 🙁 I have to learn to let go of my fear.
The botanical garden is a a short ride from our place. About 15 minutes of cycling if you follow the Google Map route but we took wrong turns and we took longer time to get there.
The botanical garden is situated off the main road in Grüningen. A quiet and a deserted place I would say. There wasn’t many people when we were there. Almost empty like how WE LIKE IT! There is a green house on the left side near the main entrance. Interesting tropical plants in there which bring back memories of Southeast Asia. On the right side, there is a pond with lotuses. Despite the blazing temperature that day, the botanical garden was cool from the plants. As we walked further inside the botanical garden, there lies a huge flowerbed of daisies and magnificent Ahorn (Maple tree). The botanical garden has a lot of different plants and flowers from different part of the world. It is only open from April to October and held several exhibitions during this time. After a short walk, we found a nice place to have our snacks and juice which we packed for the trip. Herr Hallo gets hangry so we must have food all the time, for emergencies.
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Château de Tourbillon from Basilique de Valère
There is a castle in the village of Grüningen which was built before the year 1229. I couldn’t find much information in English and my command of German is rather limited so I shouldn’t go on giving misleading historical details about the castle. However, I would really love to learn more about the castle and the village so if you know the history, please write me! We used to shop in Hinwil every Saturday and we would drive past Grüningen. I have always fascinated with the village because it is very beautiful and when I have to look at it from a car for just a few seconds I was even more curious. I’ve not been there so the first thing as soon as I bought a bicycle, Herr Hallo & I put this on top of our cycling list.
We were surprised that the castle had only a few visitors (a family of five and us). There is a small restaurant/cafe in the castle. So we ordered coffess and cake for ourselves. The castle was renovated and serves as a hotel, meeting halls and also restaurant. Sometimes there is a concert in the church. The castle is small but unique and attractive. We love being here and definitely will cycle here again. After we had our coffee, we explored the village a little and was completely taken away by the quirkiness of the timber houses tuck away from the main street. The houses have well maintained gardens and plants are overtaking some of the houses. This little village has so much characters. Unbelievable! Whilst exploring, we found a short cut walking/cycling path home and quickly ran to our bike and cycled away.
Our first cycling tour was so much fun. Finally we are exploring the side roads around our place. I had a saddle sore for a few days but it’s all worth it. The following days, I spent time tuning my new bicycle like a velo nerd and I loved every moment of it.
x Frau Hallo
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Little cafe in Grüningen castle.
In sync with nature.
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Green house at Grüningen Botanischer Garten
The compound of Grüningen Schloss/Castle
One off the list: Rheinfall, Munot & Schauffhausen Altstadt. - The Hallos
28th February 2018 @ 9:16 am
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