29/11/12

- By Jess

Day two in Bern was excellent. We had a beautifull sunny day of close to 10 degrees, which we spent walking around most of the whole city. We started with a breakfast of pretzels which we munched on whilst walking up and down the main streets of the downtown area and then headed toward the bear park on the other side of the riviera. Of course, bears hibernate in winter, which we only remembered when we actually arrived at the park. But it didn't matter because the scenery was exquisite! From the bridge over the river we could see the whole town, down into the medieval sections, and up the valley towards the chalais' in the hills. It was breathtaking. We decided to follow the trail by the river towards another bridge so we walked along it until we reached the next bridge and then headed to the museum district. We went past all of the museums, including the gorgeous Historical museum, but we were happy to take photos of the beautiful buildings and forego the exorbidant entry fees.

We then made our way back to the main historic part of Bern and bought a cheese platter and some fresh bread for lunch, which we ate in the park in front of the houses of parliament, overlooking the river. We took a lot of photos - it was like everywhere we looked was a postcard. After lunch we continued wandering the idyllic streets and stopped for some awesome hot chocolate from a tea house. It's like drinking liquid lindt - sooooo good. We wandered some more and found a couple of antique bookstores which you'd have to be a millionaire to buy anything from, and we found a brilliant game store which had some awesome editions of many of the board games we enjoy playing back home. For dinner we stopped at a pub and had more artery hardening, lard inducing, traditional swiss fare in the form of a dish (Rosti) sereved in its own frying pan. It's fried thinly sliced potatoes, smothered in gruyere, with ham and egg on top. We learnt out lesson from the night before and ordered one between us...it was still too much food. It makes sense why everyone runs about and it very outdoorsy here - they have to burn off the damn food! On that note, we've seen so many people on crutches and in wheelchairs here. As Dylan Moran said: "Why go skiing when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and break your knees with a hammer?"