Friday, November 29, 2013

Europe 2nd Trip - Bern, Switzerland (Day 13)

6th Nov 2013, Wednesday, Rainy

Rainy Day
Ahhh...raining today, cold cold. Today, we are going to Bern, another town along the Bernina Express route. And there was no hot water for shower too...so i showered slightly longer today (cannot shower with cold water...hahhaa). We all got up and packed our stuffs and went to have our breakfast. Took the chocolate powder home too... :P...and we saw the colored eggs too, my friends were curious on why the eggs were colored, so she asked the staff on why the eggs are being colored. The staff said it was to differentiate them between the normal eggs, the colored eggs were cooked hard-boiled eggs. They were colored so that people will know which were cooked and which were not. After the breakfast, we went back to our room to collect our luggage and went down to do the check out. It was still raining when we left the hotel, but we still walked to the train station.

Rainbow outside the hotel
Not able to take photos during the train ride, cos not able to open the windows and raining too. So we just sat around in the train, there were a lot of people on the train too. Once we reached Bern station, we went up to get a cab to go down to the hotel. It was a short distance from the train station, the hotel name is called Innere Enge. We were given to Room No 1, the room was quite big and there were photos, music scores and music awards hang on the wall. The toilet was also big and it had a big bathtub on the other side of the toilet. Once settled down, we ate up the instant creme brulee and rested for a while. Then, we headed out and explore the city of Bern. Just outside the hotel, i saw a rainbow opposite as the rain had stopped and the sun had came out. So nice to see a rainbow.... :).... Then we took the bus back down to the train station to start our self-guided walk (from Rick Steve's book). From the starting point, there was the Church of Holy Ghosts. Then across the street, was the shopping streets and there were a lot of shops. Some shops were located underground, there was a staircase for people to walk down to the shops. And there were also display galleries showcasing the shop's stuffs to attract customers to go their shops. And in the middle of the road, there were cars and trams passing and there were fountains too.The first one we saw was the Bagpiper fountain, these fountains are Bern's trademark from the 16th century and these were built to brighten the city and to show off the town's wealth...kekee....

View from behind of Parliament Building
After walking for some distance along the streets, we saw the Prison Tower, There was a clock on the tower too, with the hand on the clock is really a hand-shape. Then we walked to the left side, where we saw the Dutch Tower. It was a tower used by Swiss soldiers during war times, to hide inside and smoke secretly (as smoking was forbidden in Bern at that time). Then we walked further down the road, we saw the super mossy fountain standing. It doesn't look good-looking...hohoho...but it was made in 1983 and it symbolizes growth and life. And opposite the fountain, it is the Police Station building. As we were walking away from the mossy fountain, we saw some people playing chess. The board was on the ground and the chips were large size. 2 elderly people were playing on it. And suddenly there was a group of 3 young girls, who just ran towards us and tried to take photos with my 2 friends (so weird..hohohoho...). We then walked to the other side of the streets to see the Parliament and Swiss National Bank buildings. Both the buildings were very large and there was a empty square (which was having half the Swiss gold buried under it) in front of them....hohohoho....After taking photos here, we walked to the back of the Parliament building and we were greeted with a nice view over Aare River. The view was super cool, and from far, the peaks of Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau can been seen. Luckily for us, the sky was very clear and blue, clouds floating and the sun was out too. We managed to get some nice shots here. After the nice view, we continued our walk down, hahaa...we walked towards the wrong way. We had crossed over a bridge and actually, it was nice to cross over the bridge too. The wind was blowing strong and you got another different view to see the city...kekeke.....Anyway, we walked back again once we realized we had walked the wrong direction. Then there was Bern's Casino building (which wasn't a real Casino, it was the home of Bern's Symphony Orchestra), and then we reached Bern's famous clock tower - Zytgogge-Turm. It was so nice to look at, there were people just standing there, watching and taking photos of it. And we waited for some time, for the clock to ring. Then we continued our walk along the streets, more shops were there, on the lower and the ground level, until to a bus stop at Nydegg Bridge.


Brown Bear
We took a bus to Bern's bear park, which was 1 stop away...hohoho.....Once we alighted, we went to see the bears. There were 2 bears, 1 dark brown colored. and the other light brown colored. The dark brown colored bear was walking around, looking for food and the light brown colored bear just sat at the corner, under a tree. It doesn't really move much, don't know is it too hungry to move around. So we just spent some time around the place, see the bear walking to and fro, taking photos of the bears and the view. Then we went in to the souvenir shop but it was closed, there was a restaurant there too. After watching the bear, we sat down and see where we were going to have our dinner. So we decided to go a restaurant which was up on a hill, which was having a nice view over Bern. The restaurant name was Rosengarten. It was really up a hill, we had to walk up a super steep road to get the restaurant and there wasn't much street light around. By the time we reached the top, we were like panting...hahahaa....and we saw the night view over Bern city from there. The food list on the menu was really limited, my friends ordered spaghetti and i ordered a Thai Chicken Curry with rice. I like the thai chicken curry, it was nice (but it was expensive... >_<). After the dinner, we walked back down the steep road and went for some shopping in the shops along the way. There were some interesting shops, like one, there was cute cute white rats as display in the shop. And we also passed by a cinema, chocolate shop (Läderach). After all the walking, we took a bus back to our hotel to rest for the day.

Hotel Stayed:
Innere Enge

Places Saw:
Church of Holy Ghosts
Prison Tower
Dutch Tower
Mossy Fountain
Police Station
Parliament
Swiss National Bank
Casino
Zytgogge-Turm
Bear Park

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