Bern

Thursday 5th September- We headed back into Switzerland to cover the north side of the alps; the south we’ll do another time as we didn’t really want to go through the mountains with such a big vehicle. You can go under, in the tunnels, but we wanted to see the beautiful scenery of Switzerland that we had heard so much about.

We drove on the ‘1 road’ towards Lausanne but couldn’t find anywhere to park for lunch as all the car parks have low height limits so we had no choice but to continue on. We were very tired when we did finally find somewhere to stop which happened to just be a lay by next to a forest but hey, we could eat!

After lunch we carried on driving until we got to our campsite near lake Biel. The campsite was lovely and had two parks; one next to the lake and one on the campsite grounds. The sanitary block was awesome too. Why? Because it actually had toilet roll, hand soap and plugs for the sink when you go to wash up your pots! France has none of these things so it was a very welcomed pleasure to see such things. In France we had to buy a universal plug which to be honest is fantastic but still.

The women’s also had a stand up hairdryer where you just stand underneath it and pull it down/up to your required height. It was brilliant! Our little boy was not having a good time of it though and just cried and cried the rest of the evening- turns out he had cut his top left premolar! How awful it must be to grow your teeth….bless him he was all rosy cheeked and bitey bitey but also very sleepy. Thankfully. The views of lake Biel were absolutely stunning and so peaceful- a huge difference from inside our van!

On Saturday 7th we left and headed for Bern- Switzerland’s capital. Did you know that? Most people think it’s Zurich. Anyway, we got lost trying to find a car parking space as the one we were navigating towards turned out to be off limits due to height restrictions again but luckily upon our taking a wrong turn at some point we saw another space that would do. It was meant to be for buses but we didn’t see any harm in using it as it didn’t seem busy so we thought we’d risk it for a chocolate biscuit.

Whilst I was on google maps trying to find places to park I spotted a place called ‘bear pit’. My husband thought I meant the zoo but that seemed to be just a little bit further away from it so we decided to head to it as apparently you can see actual live bears just roaming around near the river. We reached the bridge and headed towards a crowd that had gathered and looked down but we couldn’t see any bears. However, we could see the space where they were supposed to roam around in and so we continued on to see if we could spot any.

Well, when we got the end of the bridge there was a circular pit with two huge brown bears in. Well one was smaller than the other but still they were huge and such a beautiful sight to see. We then carried on down the path along the section near the river where they also have space to stroll around. The area is surrounded by glass and goes from a section at the top of the bridge right down to the river. We were walking towards the stairs/lift when we spotted the bears through the glass- they had been let out of the pit and into this wooded area for all to see. It was great.

We walked down to the river and watched them from there for a bit before making our way back up. It was a beautiful place to be. The bears had there own little water area with live fish in and on the public side you had the actual river which again was so clear and beautiful and actually quite fast flowing. It was stunning.

We headed back up and walked around the city which I immediately fell in love with. The town was old and very quirky with building that weren’t quite straight and tilted out over the streets. The top half of the buildings stuck out over the bottom creating a natural walkway which bore shops and restaurants of all kinds. They also had angled basement type things with huge wooden doors that opened out into the streets- you know the kind of outdoor ones that you see on films? And some of them were shops! The place just had so much character and I loved it!

There happened to be a running event whilst we were there so there were balloons everywhere! Our daughter loves balloons and so of course she wanted one- we explained that we didn’t know how to get one as they all seemed to be tied to barriers but she kicked off so to save the peace I went to the check in point and just asked if I could take a balloon for her. Thankfully they said yes and I found a huge packet of them with some ribbon next it so I took one of each. It wasn’t inflated with helium of course but I did manage to get her what she wanted and so peace was restored.

We then went to a pharmacy that I am mentioning because it was pretty cool. Why? Because you asked the pharmacist for what you wanted and then it would be typed into the system and then that item would be dispensed out of a machine behind the counter in just a few seconds. It was awesome! I’ve never seen anything like that before so I was amazed.

Outside the pharmacy was an amazing clock tower which looked like it belonged in a toy factory it was so cool and colourful. We then went to a store and did some food shopping where we also purchased our daughter some walking boots. We felt she might need them at some point seeing as we had a pair of our own which had had a lot of use out of them since purchasing them years ago. We were in Switzerland after all!

We drove to our next campsite in the Interlaken region and had two choices of campsites I had picked out and decided on the mountain option rather than the lake option as we had already stayed by a few lakes and thought a change of scenery would be nice. The drive there was breathtaking with beautiful views of the clear lakes which had the most beautiful colour of blue, especially near a town called Thun.

Well, we got to our campsite called camping Rutti which was actually in Stechelberg in Lauterbrunnen and it looked amazing- not because of the campsite but because of the scenery. Let’s just say we had definitely chose right.