TRIP INDEX

So we landed at Zurich Airport in Switzerland. The challenge was to get to the Swiss First Class Lounge which involved taking the train to another terminal. We saw this flight board with some information but, in reality, we were just following the rest of the people on our flight.

As I recall, we took a few wrong turns, stopped in one of the many Swiss Business Class lounges to ask where the First lounge was, but eventually we made it there! I’m not sure if we had to go through the security checkpoints that we did, but it wasn’t at all busy and the Swiss workers were pleasant (unlike our good old TSA).

Actually, before we went upstairs to the lounge, we stopped by the check-in counters nearby to have our boarding passes printed out. Back in Bali, the Thai check-in agent only gave us boarding passes for DPS-BKK and BKK-ZRH. This took a while because there was apparently an issue with our tickets – something about Thai Airways “holding” our ticket so the Swiss agent couldn’t do what she needed to do with it.

After about 10 minutes of phone calls, the Swiss agent printed out our boarding passes without e-ticket numbers. She said that she’d fix the situation and get us our real passes before we left.

Well we had something; so we went upstairs to the First Class Lounge.

We checked in with an agent at the desk who informed us that we would be shuttled to our gate at 12:15 PM; boarding time was 12:35 PM. I asked her about Wifi and shower suites. She handed us a piece of paper for the Wifi and told us to just ask whenever we needed the shower suites.

As we always do when we get into a lounge, we made a bee-line to the seating area near the food! 😀

I liked the lounge a lot. Enough seating and space. Great views of the tarmac with huge windows to let lots of natural light in. The decor was simple – muted tones with clean lines. We came to find out that nothing Swiss Air-branded was ostentatious in any way. It really fit the elegant feel of the airline perfectly.

And, most importantly, the food was yummy.

The variety of food they had was great. They were mostly small bites so it was easy to try everything. Joann and I were really happy with the quality of food. The dish with the roast beef and asparagus was a great bite, so much so that I went back for about four more. 😉

After indulging in plenty of food, we both caught up on emails and such with the free Wifi. I also got one nice shot of a big aircraft from our window seats.

After a few minutes of just resting and digesting, it was definitely time to shower. Another shower in an airport lounge… I could get used to this!

I went first, asking the agent at the front desk to unlock the shower suite door for me. The shower suites were inside the restrooms, but they are well isolated. The men have two suites while the women only have one.

The shower felt amazing after being on a plane for 11 hours and then transiting through the airport. I was definitely spoiled by all the rainfall showerheads we used throughout the entire trip. I want one for our house now!

After a while, I came back out and Joann took her turn in the women’s shower suite. We went separately so we wouldn’t lose our window seats; the lounge was starting to fill up as lunchtime was approaching.

Not shortly after Joann’s shower, we went over to the sit-down dining area. We weren’t particularly hungry and we would be getting a full meal on our upcoming flight, but we wanted to sample as much as we could!

There was only one waiter serving the whole area so initially it did take a while, but we placed our order and hoped it would come soon as our 12:15 PM shuttle time was almost upon us.

The meal was good, but nothing creative like the little bites they put out in the buffet area. However, you can’t really go wrong with pasta and a BLT so we were happy we tried it.

Before we knew it, the agent from the front desk was standing over us telling us that it was time to go! She looked pretty ticked that we weren’t at the front desk on time. The Swiss must not mess around with their time and it was probably because there were other passengers to be shuttled.

We scurried to gather our things and head towards the elevator to the ground floor where the van was waiting on the tarmac. We had three other First Class passengers with us so it was a tight fit. Joann and I could definitely feel their stares as they were all older business men and we were just a young couple on a joyride.

Nonetheless, we enjoyed a nice shuttle to the Swiss and Lufthansa departure gates. It was really cool driving almost underneath the Swiss widebody jets. Not often can you say that you’ve been driven on the tarmac of an airport!

Once we got to Terminal E, the driver wished us farewell and we took the elevator upstairs to the main area of the terminal.

It was time for the best flight of our lives…