Zürich, Day 2

Our hotel room turned out to have a little kitchenette included, so after breakfast Carl and I went out to stock up our fridge and get some grocery and other essentials. Actually getting the essentials turned out to be a bit of a last-minute rush before we got ourselves organised in terms of transport tickets for the journey over to Martin's place, the former Music Group member who now lives in Zürich. Some clothes shops proved more inviting at first than the local co-op (or 'coop' as the hotel receptionist confusingly called it). We did well, and made it over to the appointed meeting place at 2.00 pm.

Martin gave us a number of options for our afternoon road trip, and we finally settled for Rheinfall, a spectacular sight which we thoroughly enjoyed. Here we met up with Ron, another member of our group, who is a German working in Dublin for some time now. He travelled separately and was basing himself not in Zürich but close by between his parents' home and an aunt and uncle. Ron works for Hertz in Dublin, gets a good deal on car rental when away, and swears by his little portable sat-nav device. Unfortunately, he's not as good as he might be in terms of following the sat-nav instructions, and tends to spend more time getting back onto the correct route than going directly from place to place. This proved very frustrating later on to Martin, who wanted us to go on to Stein am Rhein after Rheinfall, which is a lovely, unspoiled medieval town beautifully situated on the banks of the river. My spare camera battery acted up yet again, so I didn't get the blips I'd hoped for around Stein am Rhein. Rheinfall proved to be a good photo-op spot, though.

Each time we go away on these annual musical pilgrimages (I prefer to call them that, since then I can fool myself into being entitled to other ''real' holidays later in the year), we arrange what we refer to as 'The Gala Dinner'. Martin used his local knowledge to choose and book a restaurant, which turned out to be the perfect spot for our get-together. After our meal we went back to the city centre for a bit of a pub crawl. It was 2.30 am by the time I fell into my hotel bed.