A Day in Bern…Rawwr!

Hi again! Last weekend we took a trip to Bern, and it did not disappoint! Bern is such a beautiful city with hundreds of fountains and lovely stone buildings everywhere. I read that long long ago the city had a major fire, and when they rebuilt they took out all the wooden structures and replaced them with stone. I don't think they've had a major fire since.

The city also uses the bear as its mascot and there are bear statues everywhere. They have an old bear pit, which is basically a big hole in the ground where they keep bears! They've done some updates to it in recent years to improve the quality of life for the bears, and unfortunately for us it was closed for repairs when we visited. Quinn was pretty bummed!

We arrived by train, it was a super easy, very scenic hour train ride from Lausanne and walked around the old city for the morning. It's beautiful cobblestone streets were lined with flags and there are fountains about every block that the kids had fun drinking from and washing their hands off in!

After we had a  snack in the old city we walked across one of the many bridges and happened upon a place called Rosengarten. It was quite a hike to the top of a giant hill, but we were rewarded with breathtaking views of the city! This park had a giant wooden playground, a little cafe, and hundreds of gorgeous roses and gardens. It was a perfect break from the stroller for the kids and we must have run around and played there for an hour. I mentioned to Kevin while we were there that we may have to re-name our blog "The Parks of Europe", because that seems to be where we find ourselves most!

I had a bunch of really nice pictures of the park and gardens but unfortunately I deleted them while transferring to my to new Swiss phone! So sad.

Anyway, Kevin got some nice pictures from the day, so glad we have those.  After the park we headed down to the city to watch the Tour de Suisse. The time trial for this bike race was in the city and we got to see some of our favorite riders! The kids also had a great time dancing and playing in the square with all the other spectators. It was quite a scene.

 This was a really cool bike track that bigger kids were riding around! We snuck onto it before the big kids did and got some running in!

There was a steal drum band in the square (kind of random for Switzerland..). The kids spun and danced their hearts out while we waited for the bikers to ride by, and when they rode by IT WAS FAST! If you blinked you missed them! Here's a blurry picture for proof.

We had a great day in Bern and we can't wait to go back. It was kind of neat going to the capital city and feeling like we were in a totally different country because of all the German speakers! 

xoxo