Old Town | delicious specialty-food stores | aromatic food emporium | New York

And, oh, the delicious specialty-food stores in the Old Town. I couldn't help sampling the fare at Bodega Gorgot and Bodega Española, a Spanish bodega and restaurant set up in 1874 and stocked with fine rioja and excellent chorizo and calamari. I also couldn't resist the offerings at H. Schwarzenbach, an aromatic food emporium laden with spices, teas, coffee, meats, and wines that can match anything New York and Paris have to offer. The sweets department even offers handmade marzipan shaped like Snow White and the seven dwarfs - not to my taste, but I knew my daughter would love them, so I plunked down the necessary Swiss francs.

The Old Town is particularly moody at night, when the old-fashioned gaslights come on and the medieval streets are filled with modern-day revelers. The absence of harsh, modern anticrime lighting gives everything a mellow look. I enjoyed just wandering around and drifting back in time, stopping at a few places for red wine before I went home for the evening.

The Old Town is, thankfully, not entirely sanitized. This is the part of Zurich where eccentrics are welcome, including people like Frankie B., the grizzled proprietor of Coiffeur du Théatre, a hair salon where every customer is invited to share a beer and is given a chance to enjoy the hundreds of black-and-white rock-and-roll photos and other eclectic decorations. When I stopped in, a Buddy Guy video was playing, so the shop was filled with the sweet sound of Chicago blues. In the summertime, Frankie moves his operation to the street to escape the heat in his shop. He welcomes new customers but warned me to try to book appointments before noon, because the beer drinking takes its toll on him: "After that, the barber is drunk," he admitted. I checked my watch - it was 3:30 in the afternoon - and decided to move on without getting a trim.