After a wonderful travel adventure, with unbelievable weather, the clouds rolled into Switzerland and were predicted to stay for over a week. So we looked at our options, including flying back to Amsterdam early, but that was also rainy and cold. On the other hand, there was only a minimal cost to fly home to Seattle 5 days early, so we decided to come home last Saturday and I’m writing this blog post from sunny Seattle.

So back to our last stop in Switzerland: the Swiss Capitol of Bern.

We left Murren after 3 wonderful days in the high mountains. We met a large family there traveling together. Eight of their group all went paragliding together (each with its own professional pilot). What a brave and adventurous family!

Hopefully, we can come here someday with our family and do the same. Jim said he would video our group paraglider flyby from our hotel (his paragliding days are behind him).

After breakfast we left our hotel in Murren and took the giant gondola down the very steep path to the valley floor where our car was parked. On the way down fellow passengers asked me to play my Uke, so I did! We all sang “Edelweiss” together. It was a magic moment.

Before the 90 minute drive to Bern, we stopped at Trummelbach Falls, a crazy, nearby waterfall that cascades down through a slot canyon in the side of the mountain. An elevator takes you up part of the way and then you climb multiple flights of stairs to see the waterfall from multiple perspectives as it courses through the very steep and windy slot canyon. The sound of the force of the falls is so loud and overwhelming that Jim said: “this is the sound of gravity.” So true.

After leaving the waterfalls, we drove about 30 minutes before stopping in Interlaken to check it out for the future. It’s a small city between two large lakes and we stopped at a recommended ice cream place for snack. Interlaken is definitely a good stopping place where you can get to all the nearby mountains and lakes easily by car or train.

From there we drove an hour to Bern and our lovely Bellevue Palace Hotel. It was by far our nicest stay in Switzerland, with room for all our luggage, a real king bed, and space to relax and recharge from our previous fast-paced adventures. Getting our mess of partially packed stuff out of the car was quite an experience. But the hotel staff who helped us were very friendly and didn’t bat an eye. Amazingly, although there were dark clouds during our drive, the big rain held off until we were safely in our room. Then the skies opened, rain poured down in sheets and lighting and thunder filled the sky.

We opened our windows to watch the storm and I proceeded to organize all our stuff back into their appropriate places.

The hotel has what they call the first “American Bar” in Switzerland. We couldn’t figure out what that really meant, but given the rain we went there for dinner that night.

Touring Bern and a quick visit to Murten

Bern is the capitol of Switzerland, a federal republic like the USA, and the capitol in the Canton of Bern, which is one of the largest Cantons of Switzerland. There are less than 10,000,000 Swiss citizens, but they are governed in 26 Cantons, each of which resembles an American State from a tax and local governance perspective. Our hotel was only a block from the Capitol and Parliament building. A winding river surrounds the old town.

We took a 3 hour tour, given by a lovely Mexican guide whose husband is doing cancer research at the local Medical School. Even though she has only lived in Bern for a few years, her love of the city thoroughly infused her talks. The world is such an amazing place.

We began our tour near the bear habitat. “Bern” means bear. Why? Legend has it that when the city was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, he commissioned the nobleman Cuno von Bubenberg to establish the city on a peninsula surrounded by the Aare River. Apparently, he said he would name the town after the first animal he saw, which was a bear. So now in Bern you see bear references everywhere, especially on the city’s flags, which are also everywhere. And unlike most flags, the flags in Switzerland are squares, not rectangles.

The Main Street of Bern’s old town is a UNESCO world heritage site, totally charming and very walkable.

That night we went to a local restaurant recommended by a local jewelry maker where I stopped and bought some earrings. The restaurant was very good and we met the owner when we purchased one of the t-shirts the staff wears with a “Mary Poppins” penguin on it.

Our second and last full day in Bern was long and fun. We had a lot to accomplish: the Einstein Museum, riding a streetcar to a nearby hill overlooking the old city, riding a train to Murten, buying Sprungli Chocolates, and finally, packing for our early morning flight from Zurich to Amsterdam.

One of our favorite visits was to the Einstein Museum housed in an old castle-like building. Once again, we are learning that creative curation is the magic of excellent museums. We saw that in Melk on our River Cruise and last year in the jewelry exhibit in Singapore. When we bought our ticket, they asked us if we wanted to see the new Bronze Age exhibit in the basement for $2 more. We said yes and we are so glad we did.

The Bronze Age exhibit was exceptional, explaining the importance of bronze and how it was the “AI” breakthrough of the ancient world, right up there with “the wheel.” Copper was the first metal humans mined, but it was too soft for most applications. Tin, the second metal humans mined, was better than copper, but still too soft. Then some creative person figured out that mixing 1 part tin with 9 parts copper made bronze, a hard metal that could be used to produce chariot wheels, knives, swords, spears, armor, dishes, cups, jewelry and many other useful things. The Bronze Age lasted 1,500 years, until humans finally discovered how to produce Iron, which is hard like bronze but even stronger and less expensive.

The combination of art and narratives were inspiring and educational and then there was the “hand”. The exhibit takes you into a movie that explains the recent archeological finding of a bronze hand. At the end of the movie the doors open dramatically in the back of theater to reveal the actual hand and the exhibits discuss it further postulating its meaning (probably a prosthetic hand for a ruler who lost their real hand in battle), but possibly a religious icon or something else.

From there we proceeded upstairs the to our main goal: the Einstein Exhibit. The exhibit begins up a mirrored staircase that appears to visually “bend” space-time.

Many of us know about Einstein’s story, but they do an excellent job putting his discovery of the “special theory of relativity” and the “general theory of relativity” into the perspective of the simplicity of the early 1900’s, when Einstein’s “day job” was reviewing patent applications for Switzerland in Bern.

From there we grabbed a bite to eat at the recommended cafeteria across the street in the Alpine museum. One of the museum guides said it was better and less expensive than the Einstein cafeteria and she was probably right.

As we walked through the main road in the old town we heard piano music and it turned out that it came from a troubadour who had rolled his piano to the center of the street.

After the Einstein Museum we caught the #7 streetcar and then transferred to the #10 streetcar to reach the Rose Garden on a nearby hill with a remarkable view of the old city.

From there we made our way back to the center of town to find the Sprungli Chocolate shop at the train station and then check off the last thing on Jim’s list: Swiss Train trip.

Navigating the busy train station with lots of stairs and no easy way to accommodate luggage validated our previous decision to rent a car after our river cruise rather than travel by train to Prague and Switzerland. But without luggage we were able to successfully navigate our way to Murten, which is a small, old town overlooking a lovely alpine lake.

Unfortunately, by this time we were really tired and after walking down to the lake level, we didn’t have the energy to walk back up and it was starting to rain. Fortunately, there was a lakefront hotel and they called a taxi for us to take us back up the hill and to the train station. I would definitely go back to Murten the next time we visit Switzerland. We thought we might grab dinner in Murten before training back to Bern, but none of the outside dining areas were open so I bought some chips and soda to hold us over on the return train.

Once back in Bern I purchased the Sprungli chocolates before leaving the train station. The rain returned on our walk back to our hotel so we stopped for some pizza. The restaurant only served gluten free pizza, but the crust was yummy and we weren’t going anywhere else in the pouring rain.

Because wetter weather was forecast to continue for several days, we decided to change our plans and fly home 5 days earlier. It turns out the lack of travel to the USA made left many open seats on the earlier flight we booked so the change fee was minimal compared to 5 more days staying at Swiss hotels.

So we woke up early on Saturday June 7 and drove to Zurich, where we returned our rental car and checked in for our flights to Amsterdam and then from there onto Seattle. We weren’t sure if we would be able to check our luggage all the way through to Seattle, but because KLM is part of Delta’s “One World” network, we were able to do that without a problem.

From there it was just two flights. The stop in Amsterdam was easy and the amazing Amsterdam KLM Lounge made the 2 hour wait for our flight to Seattle very comfortable.

In another small world experience two of our Seattle friends were on the same flight from Amsterdam to Seattle!

With our lie flat seats on the final leg of our journey home, we easily relaxed. The plane had decent WiFi and I watched the French Open women’s final on my phone, ate some food, took my ambien and then slept until we were awoken for a snack and the landing. Customs was a breeze. We had itemized all our purchases, but we weren’t even asked about them, even though we had two suitcases, a duffle bag and two backpacks.

Switzerland Tid Bits:

The food. As another traveler said to us, “you don’t come to Switzerland for the food” and that is absolutely true for the German speaking, mostly northern areas of Switzerland (French and Italian are the primary languages spoken in Switzerland’s western and southern regions). The next time we visit Switzerland we’ll have to see how the food is in the French and Italian regions. The coffee we experienced was especially mediocre, and one local we met who had lived in Seattle for many years said she especially missed the coffee.

The prices. Switzerland is very expensive. This isn’t a budget travel spot.

Public safety. Switzerland is very safe. Interestingly, like Israel, every Swiss male must join the military at 18. They are all trained to shoot and they keep their weapons at home. They are ready for anything. No one warned us about pick-pockets in Switzerland, unlike every other nation we visited on this trip.

Large Beds. Switzerland does not believe in King or Queen beds. Each person gets their own bed and comforter, which you can push together if you want one, larger shared bed. Only our most expensive hotel, the Bellevue Palace in Bern, had a single large bed.

Back in Seattle

We came home a bit early for three reasons: (1) The weather shifted; (2) We were ready; and (3) We were cutting it tight on our original schedule to be rested and ready the for Grand Opening of Dick’s Everett restaurant (#10!).

As usual it took us time to get over our jet lag and our house was a bit chaotic because the construction related to our new elevator was almost finished but not cleaned up yet.

It took us a couple of days to get things at the house back in order and almost a week to get completely over our jet lag.

But four days after our return, on Wednesday June 11, we were pretty fresh for the soft opening that afternoon and raring to go for the full opening party on Thursday morning June 12.

Yesterday, for Father’s Day, we enjoyed sunshine, grandchildren and Little League baseball.

We are blessed and life is good.

Thank you for following along on our adventures! Before we left on our cruise up north we got to visit with my sister, Rachel, meet with two friends from the river cruise, Sue and Michael, catch a lunch with friends Erika and Carrie and celebrate our 44th Anniversary on Whidbey with dear friends Erica (who brought a yummy cake) and Laird and Carol who made us a wonderful dinner. I’m finishing the blog as we are anchored at Echo Bay, Sucia Island (one of the San Juan Islands).

True Love Adventures is written by Fawn and edited by Jim.