Hiking to the Lake

We spent last weekend at the beautiful home of my cousin Brigitta and her husband Peter.  They live on a hill at the edge of Uster, a city located about ten miles to the east of Zurich.

From their house on a clear day you can see the Alps in the distance.

At the bottom of the hill we could see a "wanderweg", a hiking path.  We decided to see where it would take us.

Starting along the path, we could look up and see Brigitta and Peter's house on the hill.

We followed a fork leading into the forest where it was much cooler.

When we came out of the woods, in the distance we could see the Greifensee, a large lake near Uster.  We decided to continue our hike to the lake.

The hazy outline of the Alps were on the horizon to the south.

We reached a highway at the village of Riedikon.  We looked at Google Maps, and knew that we were close to the lake, but we didn't know how to get to the shore.  I asked a young fellow who was passing by.  He said that he was going in that direction and that he would show us the way.  We had a nice conversation (in English) as we walked.  He showed us a hiking path that would take us to the water's edge.

The lake is about four miles long and was formed by glaciers during the last Ice Age.

For the most part the lakeshore is undeveloped and is a nature reserve and recreational area.  There were plenty of people out having picnics, swimming or just enjoying the out of doors.  We continued  walking along the shoreline path until we came to developed area by the road to Uster.  There is a park with a swimming pool, marina, restaurant and snack bar.  There is a also a boat which crosses the lake.

 

We stopped at the snack bar and had something cold to drink.  We decided that we had done enough hiking for one day.  We saw that there was a bus stop not far from there, so we took two buses to go into the center of town and then to Brigitta's house.