An Afternoon at Lake Zurich

We had almost exactly twelve hours in Zurich. The flight left London at some ungodly hour, deep in the dark blue twilight of morning when the skyscrapers of the Docklands were still half-asleep, and began its journey over Europe. The Alps appeared with a flourish through the plane window, a mirage on the horizon, poking their heads above the clouds.

It was almost 32 degrees when we landed. Zurich in the summer is one of the most understatedly beautiful places to spend a day. The Swiss, usually so reserved, thaw and open up with the rising temperatures.

It's not the most obvious place for a day trip from London, but when the clear blue waters of the Zürichsee hover into view, it's enough to make you want to move here, get a job in a bank, live a calm, easy life.

There's something almost Mediterranean about the way life spills out onto terraces and promenades in Zurich in summer, something that no amount of Swiss efficiency can suppress. We stopped for a coffee, watched the trams slide past. The old town is a picture postcard of narrow cobbled lanes and guild houses. If you have time you should go and see the stained glass windows in the Fraumünster and the Grossmünster, the city's two churches, their towers presiding over the river.

Zurich has always punched above its weight culturally, especially for somewhere so stereotypically conservative. This was the city that gave the world Dada, where Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and more or less invented the twentieth century's relationship with modern art. The Kunsthaus, one of the world’s great art museums, sits a short walk from the lake, overflowing with Monets and Giacomettis and Twomblys.

We made our way from the Altstadt towards the lake. The weather demanded the cooling embrace of its glacial waters.

You could spend a whole day easily in the Seebad Utoquai, a little bathing platform built in the late 19th century, when the city was busy transforming itself from a small medieval town into a metropolis extending around the shores of the lake. The Seebad was part of that ambition, one of several elegant bath houses constructed along the then newly built Quaianlagen, the grand lakefront promenade that gave Zurich its distinctive waterfront character. All wide tree-lined boulevards, ornamental gardens, and these charming wooden bathing platforms extending out over the water.

Seebad Utoquai is my favourite of all them, and with its wooden changing rooms and diving boards and clusters of people lying out on the decks with books flecked with water and suncream, it has the feeling of time suspended.

The waters are cool, bright blue, cleaner than any lake abutting a city should be. You should dive straight in. It's the kind of weather that demands swimming out as far as you can go, and then warming up slowly in the sunshine with a beer, or cooling off with an ice cream. Seebad is wonderfully communal, people on their lunch breaks swimming before heading back to their offices, a few remote workers tapping at laptops in the shade.

Later, dried off and a little sunburned, our linen shirts crisp and wrinkled, we found a spot along the promenade for the afternoon. A bratwurst from one of the lakeside stands, accompanied by a dollop of thick mustard and a crispy bread roll unequal to the task of containing the expanse of sausage, and another cold beer. The light on the water turned gold in the evening sun.

Across the lake, the Alps were still just visible, the same ones we'd seen from the plane that morning, making everything else feel briefly, pleasantly insignificant.

The taxi back to the airport cut through the early evening traffic, the city loosening after the day's heat, people lingering outside bars and restaurants along the Limmat. Zurich at dusk, unhurried and golden, is almost as perfect as Zurich on a scorching afternoon. We were airborne again before dark, the lake a glint of reflected light below.