Our day in Bern

This is Bern!

Bern is even more beautiful than Geneva.

We woke up this morning and checked out of our hostel. We stopped at a grocery store to get some toothpaste (our little travel tube didn't hold up) and some breakfast. We got to the train station about an hour before our train left. We weren't taking any chances this time! I also found another USA Today at the newsstands :-) So we settled onto a bench to eat breakfast and read the news. Our train came along about 11:30am and we were off. This was not a high speed train, so it took us 90 minutes to get to Bern. The scenery was just beautiful. We saw all the typical Switzerland stuff- the mountains, green hills, cows munching on grass, corn fields, little houses with red tiled roofs, hay bales in big fields. It was so much fun.

When we arrived in Bern, we were completely lost for a solid 30 minutes. We read on the hotel's website to take bus 20. The problem is, we didn't know which direction or what stop to get off on. There was a map on the platform that showed the tourism office. But we were so confused, we couldn't figure out where we were on the map or how to get to the tourism office. After wandering around the station for close to 20 minutes, we happened upon all the restaurants and shopping that signify the main part of the train station. The tourism office was extremely helpful-as usual. They gave us a map and when we told them our hotel, the girl knew exactly where it was without even having to look it up. She told us we could take the bus, but it was also easily walkable even with our luggage. Daniel also asked for a few German words to get us through the day. She told us that everyone here knows English and we would be perfectly fine saying Please, Thank You, Hello, and Goodbye in plain old English. That was a relief.

A really long German word- we have such a hard time speaking these words, we just laugh.

We found our hotel with no problem. They even have street signs that say all the nearby hotels and point where to go. Once again, our hotel is wonderful. We have a beautiful room on the third floor, right next to the shower that is shared between five rooms. There is a sink in our room. They even left little cookies on the bed that are a Swiss tradition. We have free wi-fi and free breakfast tomorrow morning. There is even a balcony outside our french doors. We are a 10 minute walk from the entire tourist area.

The front of our hotel

We crossed a huge beautiful bridge to get to the "Old Town." This city is the most beautiful city I have ever been in. The river forms a "U" around the Old Town. It is bright teal fast-flowing water. There are lots of tall, narrow houses along the river with red tiled roofs. We saw the tower of the big cathedral. Unfortunately, half of it was covered in scaffolding. You can't have everything I guess. As we have done in the past few towns, we just started wandering. We immediately found the famous Clock Tower. There is a big clock on the top, and a calendar clock on the bottom. We found it difficult to read, but somehow it tells you the day of the week, month, and all that. We had lunch at a cute little Italian restaurant. I know, we're in Switzerland, but you can only have so much cheese fondue. It was delicious anyways. On the map we were given from the tourism office there was a clear path that went through Old Town and covered pretty much every important landmark. We followed it and saw Einstein's house, City Hall, the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, the Bear Pits, another big cathedral, the University, House of Parliament, another huge bridge with a gorgeous view of the city, and lots of fountains. We were very disappointed to find out that the Bear Pits were empty. The last bear died on April 30 and they haven't put any new ones in. They are in the process of creating a new enclosure where the bears will be able to roam free throughout 20 hectares of land. This will open in October of this year.

The clock tower

The empty bear pits.

Daniel is a statue on top of the fountain.

Between all these landmarks was tons of shopping. Daniel especially enjoyed looking at all the (very) expensive watches. He wanted to buy one, but we couldn't really find one for less than about 100 CHF. That's almost equal to 100 dollars. We also stopped in H&M. Daniel's pants have been getting bigger over the last 2 weeks (or maybe he's getting smaller) and he needed a belt to hold his pants up. We didn't find any belts, but came out with 3 new polo shirts. Since he shrunk all his clothes at Christmas, it was time for some new ones anyways.

We took a break in a little plaza and watched some old men playing chess. They had a chess board on the ground that was about 10 feet by 10 feet. The pieces were 2-3 feet tall and carved out of wood. The players picked up the pieces and walked over to place them on another square. It was so fun to watch. Then we walked back over to city hall. Earlier we noticed that they were setting up a stage and saw an ad for a jazz band performing at 20 hour. Daniel got a bratwurst and a beer for dinner, but I was still full from lunch. The band was okay, and after an hour we were ready to leave. Earlier we bought a bottle of wine from a liquor store. We wanted to try Swiss wine to compare it to Spanish wine and French wine. The man at the store helped us pick one out that was made in Bern.

The giant chess game

Daniel eating dinner

So here we are, sitting on our balcony, watching the very end of the sunset, drinking our Swiss wine. I think this town is so beautiful. Daniel and I decided that some day, when we're rich, we are going to have a second home in Switzerland. We'll buy it right after we buy our private jet to fly here :-) I am so glad that we worked this country into our itinerary. We were only here for about 3 days, but it's been delightful. And we're getting out of here just in time- tomorrow is a Swiss national holiday and there are already fireworks going off tonight. All the stores closed early tonight and they are closed tomorrow. I can't believe tomorrow night we'll be in Italy!!