Burning Up In Bern
Travel Tips for Bern
Some businesses in the old town (the Alstadt) are in cellars along the roads with folding wooden doors leading underground.
Bern has excellent river swimming options that aren’t very well promoted! Visit in the summer to take advantage.
Don’t rent a car because you won’t need one! The public transportation in Bern was probably the best we experienced in Europe if not second to Zurich.
The animatronic bell ringer in the astronomical clock is a tourist trap! He rings the bell once per hour of the clock (twice at two, six times at six, etc) and draws a huge crowd. Avoid the clock during those times if you don’t like crowds. Maybe arrive at ten or eleven at night to see him smack the bell a bunch of times.
Visit Rosengarten Bern at sunset if you can for the best views of the city!
Our Travels In Bern
This is a weird post to write because I was plain old sick for most of our time in Bern. You could definitely tell I was… burnin’ up! As terrible as that joke was, that’s about how terrible I felt in Bern. Thankfully it didn’t start out that way or I would have missed capturing the banner image featured on this post! If you read our last post you’ll know we were unexpectedly stuck in Montreux before arriving in Bern.
That delay forced us to scramble across Bern to our hotel before rushing to a sunset at Rosengarten Bern. The rose garden sits on a hill above the Alstadt overlooking the Aare River. I tend to stay in one spot for an hour when I photograph sunsets so I was excited to be in a garden for once. It turned out to be one of my favorite views during our travels! The spectacular view actually made it tougher to photograph because of how many beautiful buildings were in sight. The hundreds of people waiting there for sunset when we arrived didn’t help, either. Shooting near everyone else would guarantee the same image that hundreds of cell phones capture every day. I chose to move away from the crowd for my more unique take on the skyline.
I took so long photographing that Chandni had time to explore the rose garden, run to the grocery store for our dinner, and then return just as I was finishing up. That’s about when I started feeling bad.
Sometime that night I started running a fever. I felt bad enough in the morning that I told Chandni to head out while I rested. Around lunch time I reluctantly got up, and to be honest, I was more excited for grocery store food than for exploring Bern. I didn’t even remember much of what we did that day in Bern without checking our travel journal. That’s because we just took it slow, walked around town, and headed home early. My creativity was shot so I only snapped a couple of photos. One of those shots included the charmer on the right. Clearly, sometimes rest is necessary even when traveling.
Day two started as well as day one but my fever had broken over night. You know that gross feeling waking up in sweat after a broken fever? That was my morning alarm. This time Chandni woke up extra early for a morning solo trip to nearby Thun without me, but we agreed to meet up at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Yes, that’s right, tacos in Bern were on our lunch menu! Something unique to Bern are the businesses inside cellars between the sidewalk and the traffic lanes in the old town. Underground is where we found our tacos hiding.
Being sick and tasting something from home was unbeatable!
We hadn’t heard Spanish or seen a taco in a while. Were they great tacos? Nope, but for a full Mexican crew living in Switzerland they did a mighty fine job cooking nopal tacos with what was available. I’m sure they’ve introduced many people to something spicier than black pepper. I also can’t talk about our dining experience without mentioning the soap dispenser in the restroom. They turned a tequila bottle into a soap dispenser. When we own a home, we will also be turning a tequila bottle into a soap dispenser!
After our taco injection we kept browsing boutiques and back alleys in Bern with no real aim. Have you ever wandered so hard that you accidentally stumbled into an active government chamber? We have.
We almost entered a Bern city council meeting in progress by mistake. Thankfully town hall guards redirected us before we met Bern’s finest at work. Unsure of what to do with the rest of the day, we chose a totally unplanned experience. We went straight to the train station to catch the Chocolate Express and visit the Cailler Chocolate Factory an hour and a half away.
Yes, the train is named the Chocolate Express and it’s covered inside and out with paintings of chocolate! While you might think such a sweet ride choo choos you to heaven, it actually takes you to the front door of a chocolate factory. Close enough!
The Cailler tour is much smaller than the Lindt tour found in Zurich, but unlike the Lindt tour they offer more types of chocolate samples during the tour. Bother tours showcase how proud the Swiss are of inventing milk chocolate. However, after now trying many, we’re very sure that while we appreciate Swiss milk chocolate, we’re dark chocolate lovers through and through!
I wish I had more energy when we visited Bern. That may have motivated us to experience more or stay out longer. We didn’t have a bad time exploring Bern, but neither of us felt excited about anything we did. There’s nothing pulling us back for another visit. That doesn’t mean we don’t recommend Bern when visiting Switzerland. It felt like the best cross of a small Swiss town with the amenities of a larger city like Zürich. Having the best of both worlds is worth experiencing at least once.
