Tapering down

What - Only two buses, four trains and a tram?  We’re gearing down in preparation for the journey home.

But we were nevertheless on the 08:47 bus to the station on Monday for a dullish, dampish ride up to St Gallen, where we had a stroll round the old town before visiting the cathedral and the abbey library.  Together they are worth the journey.  The cathedral, though rather ornate, is well proportioned, and has a good acoustic - someone was practising at the organ while we were there.  The abbey library is astonishing: gaudy baroque interior with bookcases on two levels.  More impressive was the small collection of medieval manuscripts on display in glass cases together with informative notes.

Thence to a decent if familiarly expensive lunch - better value today than hitherto at the Al Capone steakhouse at the Marktplatz.  We looked briefly at the textile museum after lunch.  Interesting, but one would need to be more informed on mechanical embroidery and fashion to make much of the clothing section.  The furnishing fabrics section was startling in places - rather a lot of dazzling 1960s op art, and some very loud colours.  Lots of imaginative trompe-l’oeil material, though.  And the tickets (free again) came on little pieces of fabric cut with pinking shears.

Back to the Ibis to make a start on the packing, and for a welcome cup of tea.  Our much-travelled kettle has served us well yet again, and one small refinement to our travelling kit was a bar of four 13-amp socket outlets wired up to a local plug.  It has made charging iPads, kindles and iPhones much easier.  Much as we love our big boats, the cabins come with one continental 16-amp, one 13-amp and two (for us) useless American socket outlets.  So we shall replace the Swiss plug with a French 16-amp one when we get home: it pays to keep a few old plugs and cables, eh?

Tuesday’s flight is fairly late, so we’ll have time in Zürich for lunch with a former colleague before we need to head out to the airport.  With a certain amount of Ach und Krach we have succeeded in downloading our boarding passes to our iPhones, so we shouldnt have to rummage about for paper.  Well, we can’t anyway, since we’ve no access to a printer.  We ought to have mastered this ages ago, but find that, with advancing years, the starting friction for new technology has become greater.  My next task is to find out how to use the phone for contactless credit card purchases...