Admiring the Views in Bern

We arrived in Bern in the early evening, after our lunchtime wanderings in Basel. The hotel Scott had found for us in Bern was in the old town, and the hotel had given us instructions that we should drive to their door to unload and then they would direct us to where we could park overnight. What we didn’t quite understand was that to drive to their front door, we would have to drive through several blocks of pedestrian-only zone. It was a little tricky, awkward, and slow going, and we later discovered that we could have just parked and then walked two blocks with our suitcases. I think that would have been the easier option :)

Bern is incredibly beautiful. Its picture perfect old town is located on a hill surrounded by a u-turn in the Aare river with the Alps visible in the distance. After we got checked into the hotel, we went to stroll around old town and find a place to eat dinner. We first came across the impressively stately Bern Capitol building. Right behind it was a lovely view down over the river. We walked along the southern edge of the old town looking out and down over the river, then decided we’d love to sit somewhere and have a drink overlooking the view. We ended up at the Bellevue Palace hotel, which had an amazing terrace overlooking the river. They had a bar with gins from all over the world, including a bunch from Switzerland. So we ordered gin and tonics with two different Swiss gins to try and had a wonderful time sipping and watching the sunset over an incredible view (check it out in the photos). We liked it so much that we decided to stay there and have dinner as well, and got to see the moon rise from behind the Alps. The whole evening felt magical — too beautiful to be real.

Our second day in Bern was cloudy and drizzly. We did some walking around old town in the morning, and headed across the river to Bern’s Bear Park, where they have three live bears in a large, natural enclosure. The bears didn’t seem to be out, so we kept walking and decided to go to the Bern Historical Museum, which was luckily much more interesting to us than the National Museum in Zurich :) It also had a large exhibit on Albert Einstein, which we spent quite a lot of time in. When we finished at the museum, it was already past lunch time, so we ended up just getting afternoon cake and tea at a fun place down on the river’s edge. After that, we walked back to the bear park and saw the bears, then walked up the hill on the opposite side of the river from old town, to the rose garden. It had lots of beautiful roses and a great view over old town. Then we did even more walking and got down to the river’s edge through some nice neighborhoods, where we found a running/walking path all along the river. We walked back along that, crossed a footbridge, and climbed up a ton of steps to get back up to old town.

As I mentioned, these types of fountains are my favorite. I love watching the patterns of the water and the fun that kids have with the changing speeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW5pstKkkMs?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

Seriously. Couldn’t stop watching this fountain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9kpQLby44o?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

The public transportation seemed to be very extensive in Bern. There were street cars passing us all the time. We joked that they were so convenient that they became inconvenient, because as walkers we were always having to wait for them to pass so that we could cross the road :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_QMEFjsu8E?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

We got to see all three of Bern’s bears. Two were pretty far away from us in the enclosure, scratching themselves on logs or walking through bushes. This one, though, kept walking up near the wall of the enclosure that we were watching from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JFQx-9MfKE?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

The Bern rose garden had a pretty cool looking playground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDTGkEkaczc?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

We were planning to have one more half day in Bern, but with our eye on the weather for the next stop, Interlaken, we realized that we might only have one day of non-rainy weather there. Since our plan for Interlaken was hiking and mountain views, we decided to leave Bern really early in the morning to get to Interlaken in time for a hike before the rain started, hoping we might get some mountain views.