We got back to the B2 Boutique Hotel in the mid afternoon. It was just the right time to try out the Thermalbad! As I mentioned, the hotel is literally attached to the Thermalbad, although it’s run by a different company. Hotel guests get a small price break on the cost of admission– 30 Swiss Francs for 24 hour access. That means two days worth, since the spa closes at 10:00pm. We went to the front desk, where we picked up the familiar plastic bracelets offered at all of the spas we’ve been to yet, and a couple of towels.
We changed in our hotel room, although the spa has changing rooms. We didn’t discover the changing rooms at the spa until we were almost done! There’s also a small snack bar, although we didn’t notice the service to be particularly good at the one on the fourth floor. You can get a variety of snacks and a wide variety of beverages there, including beer, wine, and cocktails. That is, you can get them if you can find someone willing to wait on you. 😉
The spa offers massages that can be booked in advance. There’s an Irish-Roman bath, as well as a wonderful rooftop pool that offers views of Zürich while you enjoy bubbles and massaging jets. There’s also a Thermal Spa Waterworld, that we almost missed! In short, there’s plenty to occupy a couple of hours of your time, and you’ll feel relaxed afterwards.
I was not allowed to take any pictures, although the spa is not textile free. I did sneak a picture of the door, though, because I thought it was funny. I liked the “no sex” graphic! Below is a video that shows the facilities.
Bill and I have been to quite a few spas in Europe. This one was interesting. It reminded me a little bit of the Starkenberger beer pool we enjoyed in Tarrenz, Austria, back in 2015, except it wasn’t nearly as private and there weren’t any funny pictures on the walls of naked people. Also, there wasn’t any beer involved… it was mainly the spirit of the place that made me think of the awesome beer pools in Austria that were made from repurposed beer vats. I was also reminded of the Roman-Irish baths Friedrichsbad in Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden’s own Roman-Irish baths at the Kaiser-Friedrich Therme. The main difference, of course, is that there’s no nudity. I’m sure that’s a plus for a lot of people. I think my favorite part of the spa experience were the awesome pools on the first floor that offered massage bubbles. There was no one else in there when we were using them.
After we were finished at the spa, we went back to the room, got cleaned up, and went looking for dinner. Bill thought we could walk to the lake in about ten minutes. Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely sure of where were going, so we ended up taking a short stroll in a residential area of town. We finally made our way back and stumbled across a neighborhood gem of a restaurant called Bederhof. This place is very close to the hotel and offers good food, kind service, and a view of sheep grazing on a hillside. I made one guy crack up because he was describing one dish in German and I stopped him cold when I heard the word “champignons”. Mushrooms are disgusting to me. Incidentally, my German is terrible, but I can sort of speak restaurant… I had some trouble in Brunnen, though, because the Swiss dialect was tricky for me. Also, they use different words for some things. Like, I noticed that the word on doors for “push” was stossen (bump), rather than drücken (press).
Below are some photos from our impromptu dinner at a local Swiss joint, along with a few pictures of B2 Boutique Hotel’s exercise room.
Several different people took care of us, but one guy talked to us more than the others. There was a cute little boy there– maybe two or three years old– and the one guy who took care of us said that was his nephew, Jayden. I was surprised by the name Jayden. To me, that’s a very American name. I didn’t think our waiter was a native English speaker, although he spoke fairly competently, albeit with what sounded like a speech impediment of some kind. Jayden soon left with his mom, a beautiful young woman, who caught the plentiful public transport.
Eventually, he asked us where we’re from. We said we’re Americans living in Germany. It turned out the waiter was himself, half American, half German! He said he was born in Colorado, and his Air Force dad had worked as a contractor for DynCorp, which was a big contracting company back in the day. But clearly, our waiter, an American citizen, has spent most of his life in Germany– Kaiserslautern, to be exact. He joked that being half American, half German was having the “worst” heritage! But he was quite pleased to hear we weren’t Trump supporters, and he told us his sweetheart and the mother of his daughter is from Somalia. His daughter is Swiss, because she was born in Switzerland. Lucky her! The waiter also said he loves Switzerland. I can’t blame him for that.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, where we were warmly greeted by the same guy who had kind of ignored us the night before. We enjoyed more Swiss wine, then went to bed with big plans for Saturday. More on that in part five!