Bern - October 25th

This Saturday we took a day trip to Bern. Kyle and I went with three of his work friends; Chris, Jody, and Gay. They were all SUPER nice and it was great to hang out with them. We also had an extra special guest join us. Flat Stanley from KC came with us as well and we were able to take a couple of pictures for his class project. I'll make sure to take pictures of Stanley as soon as I can.

I still don't have my camera so we only took a couple pictures with our camera phones...I'll have to get them off of the phones at some point. If you'd like to see pictures of Bern then click here.

We left the house at 7:30 to get to the HB for 8. We then had to pick up our tickets for Bern and meet the others. We took the 8:30 train to Bern and got there around 9:30. We spent the morning looking at beautiful churches (you can't walk more then about 2 blocks without running into one) and other sites that Rick Steves told us to visit.

We saw one of the ugliest fountains in the world and went up in a prison tower that also had an exhibit of Nelson Mandela's life. We also saw the soldiers tower where people used to hide out to smoke, but then you could smoke EVERYWHERE in Switzerland so people didn't have to hide anymore. Well - people might have to start hiding in the tower again, they're trying to pass a smoking ban.

We tried to see the clock in the city center strike the top of the hour several times but seemed to always miss it. Finally, at the very end of the day, we saw the most anticlimactic event- maybe in the world. But we can't say we weren't warned. The book did tell us it was an 'anti-event' AND we weren't even the only people hanging around waiting for the chime. At 4 minutes til the top of the hour a roster crows and a jester dances. Then, 4 minutes later, Father Time turns his hourglass and the gold guy with a mallet bangs on the bell.

We went and saw the bear pit again - still super cute! And walked up to the rose garden to look out over the city. I thought the view from the bear pit was amazing - that view had nothing on this one!

We had lunch and great conversation at a wonderful little Italian place too. And Kyle found a chocolate shop where he could get something that appeared to be a chocolate covered hedgehog. It was disgusting so we just ate off the eyes and trashed the 10CHF rodent (Mom, I think you might have liked it - it reminded me of a Cherry Mash).

We got home about 6 (of course it was already pitch dark). It was the perfect amount of time to spend in Bern.