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!!

July 31- Geneva and Bern

We will take the train to Bern which takes about 2 hours. In Bern, we want to see Old Town including Barengraben, Rosengarten, and Zytgloggenturm, Klotzlikeller, Stadttheater, and Bern Casino. Tonight we have reservations at Hotel-Pension Marthahaus Bern. The website is http://www.marthahaus.ch/e/index.html.

Geneva Dinner

We came home to sit down for a min and relax before dinner (when Rachel posted last). While we were here Rachel googled places to eat here and we found a place that Frommer's recommended that is very close to where we are staying. We got there and ordered salmon and cheese fondue.

In case you didn't know, cause I didn't, fondue was invented in Switzerland and is a very typical meal here. All of the restaurents serve it. We ordered and as we have found is typical here it took a long time. After a while our waiter brought out a salad for Rachel and some bread. We shared both. Then eventually he brought out our salmon and fondue. The food was very yummy. We also enjoyed sitting outside and watching all the fancy cars drive by. Everyone here must be very wealthy. After dinner, we walked back to our hostel. Just down the street we stopped at a bar and got some drinks. The bartender recommended a caipirinha. It's kind of like a mojito, but from Brazil. I really liked it. The owner of the bar came and talked to us. He told us that the bar was only 3 weeks old and when he found out I was Cuban (in reference to the mojito), he wanted to talk in Spanish. He said that he speaks much better Spanish than English. So we spoke in Spanish for a while.

It was a fun night and we got to experience real Swiss food.

Geneva

We're blogging a little early tonight since we paid for internet for 24 hours.

We slept in this morning until about 9am and got breakfast just around the corner in a little cafe. The first thing we wanted to do was go to the U.N. In Geneva is one of the two headquarters for the United Nations (the other is in New York City). When we got there, we had to go through security and they even took Daniel's picture and printed out a security badge right there! Then we walked through the building to the area where the tour starts. We got there just in time for the English tour. There were about 30 people on our tour, and only one other group was from the US! There were people from Russia, Finland, Peru, Canada, India, and more. Our guide was fantastic. He knew so much about the U.N. and the Palais des Nations. We got to see the conference rooms where big important people discuss things like world hunger and human rights. He explained that New York is in charge of world security and disarmament and stuff like that. Geneva deals more with human rights. The tour was about 1 1/2 hours and Daniel and I both learned so much.

Daniel in one of the many conference rooms. The walls were painted by a Spanish artist in 1930.

All the flags outside the U.N.

After the tour, we crossed the street to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent museum. They had a lovely cafe where we had lunch. We learned all about how the Red Cross was started and how it was expanded. I didn't know that it actually started to help specifically with injured soldiers on the battlefield. Then when WWI ended, the organization figured they should expand into something else since there was no big war to help with. So that's when they started helping with natural disaster relief. In WWII, they discovered that they couldn't help people in concentration camps because their bylaws state that they only help military people, not civilians. So after WWII they fixed that and now they have helped establish rules that protect prisoners of war, civilians, and refugees. We also learned that Muslim nations take offense to the "Red Cross" emblem, so they use the Red Crescent instead.

We took the bus across town to the Old Town. We wandered through the English Gardens which are currently a big carnival. It took us a while, but eventually we found the flower clock.

We headed towards the big cathedral in town. Along the way, we came across a cute little chocolate shop. Of course we had to buy some real swiss chocolate. We saw in the back where they make all the chocolate right there.

At the cathedral, we were surprised to see a neoclassical structure. In the 19th century, the facade of the cathedral was redone in a neoclassical style. We climbed up what seemed like a million steps to get to the top of the tower and got a magnificent view of Geneva. It is such a beautiful city.

We walked through Old Town a little more and got to a small park. Inside the park is the "Reformation Wall." There are sculptures of lots of famous Reformationists built into the wall. There were even some English words inscribed into the wall. Some of them were about the Puritans taking the Mayflower over to the new world. And the Lord's Prayer was inscribed there too. We took the bus, and then a boat across the lake back to our hostel. It's so cool that there are boats here that function just like the busses.

Now we are trying to find a place to eat. It seems so difficult to find a reasonably priced restaurant. Maybe because we are still confused about the conversion rate to Swiss Francs. Everything here seems so much more expensive until we realize that 50 CHF is only 30 euros (which is 40 dollars). How confusing!

Tomorrow morning we check out at 10am and take the train to Bern. We will arrive there about 1:30pm.

July 30- Geneva

Today we want to pack in as much of Geneva as we can. We will see Old Town, Je d'Eua, Flower Clock, Jardin Anglais, Cathedrale St-Pierre, and Palais des Nations. We may also see a show at Grand Theatre de Geneve or Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Tonight we are staying at City Hostel Geneva again.

Beautiful Geneva

I LOVE it here! What a beautiful city.

Even the water fountains are beautiful!

Our train was scheduled to leave at 9:55am this morning and after a layover in Lyon, arrive in Geneva around 1pm. We didn't want to miss our train again, so we left our hotel at 7am. The B&B is a ways out of town. We had to walk about 15 minutes to the bus station, then take the bus to the center of town and walk another 5 minutes to the main bus station. There we would catch a bus that goes directly to the TGV train station. So there were a lot of connections to make. We walked to the bus station in time to catch the 7:35am bus. Then we realized we had no cash to pay for the bus fare. We literally used all our cash to pay for our room. Luckily, we still had our bus tickets from the day before. We flashed those and the bus driver didn't know any different. We felt terrible for being dishonest, but what choice did we have? There was no ATM near our hotel. Once we were on the bus, we had to figure out where to get off. We weren't quite sure which stop was closest to the bus station. We sat and watched out the window for things we recognized. We waited too long and ended up way out of town in the suburbs. Finally, we consulted the bus driver and he told us to just stay on the bus and he would tell us when to get off. We ended up at the end of the line and he just parked the bus and got out for about 15 minutes. This is when I began to panic. Our train left in an hour and we were just sitting on the bus with no idea where we were and how long until we were going to get going again. Finally he got back on the bus. We started to recognize the town again and he indicated where we should get off. It was about 9:35am when we got off our first bus. We already knew it was too late at that point.

My worst fear was that there was no other train that day to Geneva. Aix-en-Provence is a small town, and a small train station. Our journey was actually two: one train to Lyon, then another to Geneva. Once we made it to the train station, we went straight to the ticket office. The girl there exchanged our ticket for one that left at 1pm. We had a connection in Lyon and arrived in Geneva around 4pm. I was just so relieved that we were going to make it that day. Once again, everything worked out. Imagine if we had decided to fly everywhere! We would be in big trouble. The train ride went quickly since we both slept a lot of the way. We did wake up before 7 that morning, so we were tired.

When we arrived in Geneva, we went straight to the tourism office. Usually we look up how to get to our hotel the night before, but we got home so late from the opera and we had to wake up so early this morning that we didn't get a chance. We asked for a map of Geneva and how to get to our hotel. All we had to say was "City Hostel Geneva" and she gave us easy directions to get there. It was just down the street! An easy walk, even with our luggage.

When we arrived, we checked in. This is a top-of-the-line youth hostel. They have wi-fi, laundry facilities, movie night, even a little store. He gave us a map of Geneva with all the major tourist sites marked. It also had a ton of restaurants, bars/clubs, free bike rental place, internet cafes, etc. marked on it. It even had a suggested itinerary for one day in Geneva and all the best restaurants to eat at. There were also directions how to take the bus through town and a Q&A about Geneva. We learned that their official language is French, and what the best kind of cheese is. We also got a 3 day pass for unlimited travel on all the busses, trams, and boats in Geneva as well as 50% off admission to the Red Cross Museum! We were thrilled. And everything here is in Swiss Francs which means it's cheaper. This may sound funny, but I was so happy to find that a liter bottle of water cost 3 francs, about 2 euros. Everywhere we have been, water has been ridiculously expensive. They handed us a stack of linens and we headed upstairs to our room. We have 2 beds in a 3-bed room. There is a sink and lockers in our room, and the bathroom with showers is right across the hall. There is also a lounge, computer room, and laundry room downstairs. There is a kitchen right down the hall from us. We haven't met our roommate yet, and I'm not sure we will. We'll see what time he/she comes back tonight.

The front door of our hostel

So we set off to explore the city with our remaining time. It took us a little bit to figure out the bus. We went to the station nearby and couldn't find a map. After looking at the posted schedule and discussing how we could figure out what bus to take, a girl asked us if we needed help. She explained exactly how to get to "Old Town", the tourist area of Geneva. She tol dus exactly which bus to take, what stop to get off on to make a connection, and how many stops to go on that bus. Then while we were on the bus, another guy noticed the map we were looking at. He pointed out where we were and told us a little bit about the city. Everyone here is so nice! And there is a lot of English signs. It seems that English is pretty common, though French is the official language.

We wandered the streets of "Old Town" for about an hour. We came across more street performers and lots of shopping. We headed in the direction of the river and the lake that split Geneva in half. We walked along the lake. We got here at the exact right time. Their independence day is in two days, so they have all kinds of public events going on. There was a huge carnival along the whole waterfront. We saw signs for public concerts being held in a park. Tonight was a jazz/tango group performing at 8:30pm. It was free, so we decided to check it out. The park was right on the lake in the direction we were headed. We got some dinner at a stand set up in the park. The concert was awesome! I couldn't believe how many people were there. It was so crowded. And it seemed to me like it was almost all locals. I didn't hear hardly any English. I enjoyed just sitting and watching all the people. It seemed like everyone knew each other. There was lots of kissing on both cheeks and all. The music was upbeat and really fun. They had dancers on some of the songs that were also very good. The whole concert was very well done. We couldn't believe it was free for everyone. Even the lighting and cameras was really well done.

At the concert

Jet d'eau on Lac Lemon

Jet d'eau at night

After the concert, it was about 10:30pm and we had a very long day. We figured out how to take the bus back to the hostel and here we are. Geneva seems like a very friendly, intimate, cultured city. Maybe we got lucky being here during Independence day festivities, but the town seems like so much fun. I can't wait to see more tomorrow.

July 29- Train to Geneva

This morning we will check out of Villa Valbelle and take the train to Geneva, Switzerland. It is a 4 hour train ride through beautiful green mountains. We will take the train right through the Alps into Switzerland. Tonight we will stay in City Hostel Geneva. The website is http://www.cityhostel.ch/english/.