City Am Bahnhof Bern

Well we took the train at 8 AM from Paris to Bern. It took about four hours and we were a little tired by the time we got there. A young man we met on the train told us we would like Bern and said we should go to the Cathedral and told us all about himself. A little too much actually I was a little exhausted by the time he got off the train in another city in Switzerland. He was a filmaker and he was so excited about everything. After we arrived we went to the tourist office to get some info ...

OK, we moved on from Venice to Bern Switzerland. Long train ride, got to Bern about 9:30 pm, then off the next morning at 6:30 am to go to Piz Gloria to see the famous rotatiing restaurant that was Blofeld's lair in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. We had to change trains about 4 times, and then came my favorite part of the trip, ascending to over 8,000 feet to Piz Gloria via an arial cable car. The restaurant looks just like it did in the late 60's, so it was one of the best James Bond locat...

Neuchâtel is the major city right next to La Chaux de Fondes, and to get there, you go through the Jura part of the Alps. It was definitely a beautiful drive, and I only thought we were going to fall off the mountains a couple of times. Geoff's great grandmother lived on 22 Rue de Fleur, which amazingly was easy enough to find. The town was pretty much deserted, but we took lots of photos of the area, thinking that Grandma Juju may have gone to the school up the street, but who knows. Afterwa...

We took the car back to Bern, and once we arrived in the city, Tomtom went out! We had to find our way back without her! Eventually though, we made it back to Avis, right when I had reset Tomtom. We decided to go to Italian for dinner and made our way to Bärenplatz La Gioia restaurant. I had vegetarian lasagna, and geoff had a Calzone, which actually was just one of their pizzas folded in half. It was a very lovely restaurant. On the way home I made Geoff stop again at the bunnies, which I vi...

Moday 3/17/2008 was our last breakfast at Hotel Laimer Hof. We checked out and we on our way to Bern. First, we stopped into the grocery store to pick up some supplies for our ride, knowing that lunch would be on the train. We walked through the rain to the train station, same as we did upon arrival! Once there, we figured out our ticket situation, and decided to get coffee while we waited. Once we got on the train, we found our seats next to a very nice German woman. We had a long ride to Zu...

Tuesday 3/18/2008 was an early wake up day. We walked from the hotel to Avis Car Rental, and got there too early of course. We decided to go to the co-op next door to get our lunch for later on down the road. We then got the car, and luckily were able to get a GPS, because today was going to be an adventure! The car was a Fiat, and the Tomtom only spoke German, even though we switched the speaker to be an American. Luckily I know a bit of German, because we were off through the Alps. Our firs...

Caught the train from Grindelwald to Interlaken Ost where we caught the connecting train to Bern. Arrived in Bern at 12.30pm and walked across Bahnhofplatz to our hotel, Hotel City am Bahnhof. After checking in we walked back to the train station to get some lunch and then bought a city map and 48 hour Bern Card from the Tourist Information Centre. We returned to the hotel, got our day pack and caught the tram to Helvetiaplatz. Walked across the bridge to the Cathedral. We checked out the vie...

We had breakfast at 10am at McDonalds at the train station as breakfast was not included at the hotel and was too expensive. We then caught the tram to Bärenplatz and walked to the Parliament Building to book a tour. The next tour was at 2pm but was in German only so we decided to come back for the 3pm tour instead. We set out on the walking tour, as described on the Bern city map we purchased from the Tourist Information Centre, at Bärenplatz. We walked down Marktgasse to the Ogre Fountain a...