Lucerne to Bern
Today we travel to Bern… We slept in a bit as we needed a little extra rest. Then enjoyed a breakfast of pastries, yogurt and fresh strawberries and pineapple.
We decided that we would take the 12:00 pm train to Bern. This would give us a little over an hour to visit the Rosengart Collection Art Gallery conveniently located right across the street from the hotel! Here we enjoyed a fantastic collection of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Renoit and Monet! Although the gallery does allow photographing the art, I will not add any here for fear of copyright infringement.
Perfectly timed, we hopped on the train to Bern. A one hour ride made shorter by dozing off to the rocking and clickety clacking of the train…
Upon arrival we walked the short distance to the hotel and were pleasantly surprised that our room was ready and we were able to check in 2 hours early! Since the weather forecast was calling for rain the following day, we decided to head out and see as much of the Old Town as we could.
We visited the Bundeshaus (Parliament Building), Berner Munster Cathedral (building of the Gothic style cathedral began in 1421 and is the tallest in Switzerland!), Kirche St. Peter and Paul is another Gothic styled church built in 1864, and the Zytglogge clock tower.
Although these were all very cool to see, and the Munster Cathedral was the most amazing I have personally ever seen, I found the Old Town didn’t have quite the same charm as Lucerne. Seemed like fewer cobblestone streets and they were much wider and overall not as immaculately clean as Lucerne.
We will see what tomorrow brings… If it is as rainy as forecasted, we may make it a rest day.
Bern Day 2
After a nice breakfast at the hotel we headed out into the cool and cloudy morning…
We took a leisurely stroll past most of the same sights as the day before. But somehow the ambiance was different. Maybe it was the cooler damp weather and moody skies, but the Old Town seemed much more charming than the previous day. The highlight of the day was during a downpour of rain, of the views from the Nydeggbruke (Nydegg Bridge) over Old Town, Nydeggkirche, Unterbruke and the Aare River.
The stroll back to the hotel brought us past the residence of Albert Einstein (Einsteinhaus). It was here that Einstein wrote his Theory of Relativity!
