We headed into Bern in the morning to finish exploring the city. A short walk and we were at a tram stop that took us to the city center in 10 minutes. Having the free use of the city transit system as part of the tourism tax for the campground struck us a great idea that should be emulated other places. It allowed us to explore several parts of the city we would not have gotten to otherwise.
I guess I never new what city was the capitol of Switzerland, but if you would have asked me I would have guessed it was Zurich or Geneva. It turns out it is Bern. So I was a little embarrassed by my ignorance when we visited the parliament grounds for our first stop of the day.
We were heading up the market street towards the train station when we saw a Thai tour group taking a group photo in front of the town clock. Ton overheard the guide telling them to wait a few minutes as they were too early. We thought it was for their bus, it turns out they were waiting for the noon performance of the town clock where dancing figures come out. We heard a commotion, but by the time we hustled back it was too late and we had missed out.
We wanted to visit a local brewery and settled on Felsenau Beer. They had three locations in town, but we wanted to visit the main brewery. I put what I thought was the location in google maps, and we were off looking for Bus 21. The first problem was I couldn’t locate the bus stop. The place I thought was the bus stop was across the street from the actual bus stop and I didn’t realize it until the bus stopped across the street and then did a u-turn right in front of us to head off. So we caught the next bus, and rode it to the stop google told us in the suburbs of Bern. We got of in Felsenau, and google indicated that the brewery should be right in front of us, but I didn’t see it. I was frustrated, but figured I had done something wrong. So we headed right back to where we started where we found the down town Felsenau Brew Pub. It turns out that we were only about 100 yards from the brewery when we got off the bus but I somehow missed it. It made me feel like a rookie traveler. But we did get to taste some Felsenau beer and it was pretty good, but cost a whopping 12 US dollars each. Things are expensive in Switzerland.
Our main destination for the day was the rose garden of the city. The views of the city were supposed to be tremendous. The problem was that the town was pretty socked in with clouds and Ton wanted sun for her photos. The weather forecast said the sun was supposed to come out around 1pm. By 2:30 it had not come out and we were thinking about giving up. But at 3 the sun arrived so we decided to head up to the rose garden. It took me a couple of attempts to find the right bus stop again (not a good day for me as transit guide), but fortunately the busses run frequently here.
The rose garden did have beautiful views of the city, and was definitely worth the wait. The roses are at the end of our run as it is mid-September, but we enjoyed the views and did take in some of the roses. I think even when the roses are at their peak the views may be the real attraction here.
After the rose garden we headed back to the campground to relax as it had been a long day walking around Bern.