Bern

The day after our wonderful Zurich adventures we boarded the train to take us back home to Geneva.  Since we found ourselves with some extra time we decided to spend the afternoon in the charming little town of Bern, since it was one of the stops on the rail from Zurich to Geneva.  Bern is such a beautiful place and it is absolutely exquisite in autumn.  Right down the street from the train station there was an amazing farmers market with booths of stunning fall goodies.  I absolutely adore farmers markets!  I think they are amazingly fun and endlessly fascinating.  The produce section of this market was to die for, one entire side was devoted to floral shops that had GORGEOUS fall wreaths, garlands and bouquets.  I know I have mentioned floral shops and their autumn offerings too many times already in the past few posts, but they seriously were unbelievable I just can't get over how beautiful everything was, I really, really wanted it all!

Gingerbread! I love gingerbread, Bethy and I each got a little brick of it with a sugar frosting bears on them, mine was gone in like 10 minutes ... it was extrememly rich and had an interesting filling, I can't even describe what it was, but I just couldn't stop nibbling away.

Look at that adorable little face.  This lady had a corgie and a pug, I thought that was an interesting combination ... But I love corgies I think they are such cute little dogs I love their squatty little legs

This is a cuckoo clock that is one of the main attractions of the city of Bern.  It is a beautiful clock.  Beth and Reece had visited Bern before and waited for it to go off and said it was anticlamatic so we didn't wait around for it to strike on the hour, but it was still fun to see.

I loved this little boy's outfit, so classy.

Einstein lived in Bern for a few years on one of the main streets of the city. It is labeled on the outside and has a picture of Einstein in the window.  Here is a little excerpt about his stay in Bern ...

"The year of 1905 was very good for Albert Einstein. He published 5 of his most important papers and he referred to it as his “Annus Mirabilis” a miracle year which included his breakthrough on his Theory of Relativity. Einstein was 26, had recently married his sweetheart Mileva, taken a job at the Bern patent office and moved into a two room apartment on the main historic street of Bern, just a short walk from the town’s famous medieval clock, the Zytglogge, with its hourly glockenspiel movements of human and animal figures. He lived in the upstairs apartment at Number 49 Kramgasse street from 1903 to 1905."

There are numerous fountains all over the city and each one has a story behind the scene that is depicted on the top of each fountain's pillar.  This one looks kinda sad and gory ... I don't know the story that goes along with it, but I took a picture to show how elaborately they are painted and sculpted, they really add a lot to the aesthetic of the town.

I LOVE bernese mountain dogs, I think they are the most beautiful dogs in the world.  This one was extremely well behaved, his owner was a cute little old lady and he was very loyal to her, he got a little antsy being away from her long enough for me to get a picture with him.  He was so sweet. 

I loved this street performer, what a fun thing to share with everyone visiting Bern.  Her ginormous bubble creations were fantastic.  The bubbles were woven into so many shapes and sizes and the color was unbelievable.

Bears are the city's mascot, thus live bears have been kept within the city ever since the 1440s.  This is where we spent the majority of our afternoon, at the bear pits.  They have a mother and two cubs on one side of the encloser and a papa bear on the other side separated by a concrete wall.  All four of them were extrememly active while we there so I took A LOT of bear pictures, I tried to cut it down as much as I could for this post, but I love fuzzy animals I just had to include a lot, I thought everything they did was so cute.

  

                                                        Here is the papa bear, he was massive.

Here are the two cubs.  One was very lazy and would just lay around at different spots around their enclosure, but the other one was very active and was running around everywhere doing all sorts of silly things.  I think they look exactly like teddy bears.

This is the view the bears have from their enclosure, they are right on the river.

Mama bear went for a swim

The active cub liked to tease his mom during her swim

Papa bear found a bag full of hay and had a fun time playing with it in the water, silly old bear

Love the ears

Eventually we pulled ourselves away from the bears and headed back to town for lunch

I loved watching this father and son, he is skateboarding uphill, what a stud and what a fun, cute dad. 

If you haven't noticed I love to people watch, I find people to be fascinating.  On our way back to town we passed the bubble street performer again, she had let this adorable little boy have a turn at making bubbles.  He did a pretty good job!  He would sprint backwards and fall down every single time, but be so happy about the huge bubble he had made he would get up and do it again.  I also loved the fact that he is sticking his tongue out becuase he is concentrating so hard, my sister does that.

We got lunch at a cute little pizzeria right on the edge of town.  They had hawaiian pizza!  I have never, ever seen a hawiian pizza on a european menu, I was so excited I love pineapple on my pizza.  It was delicious, I ate that whole thing

After lunch it was time to head back to the train station, we had a party in Geneva that we needed to get back for!  We made a couple of stops on our walk back.  First we stopped by this gorgeous park that had the most breath taking views of the river.

We saw this poster for a party and I was so sad the we had missed it, I bet that would have been an awesome scene.

Then we peeked inside the main cathedral.  It had beautiful stained glass windows that were so vibrant and wonderful!  There was even someone playing the magnificent organ when we walked in, it was a neat experience to hear.

I love seeing colorful reflections of stained glass on cathedral walls

Then we continued our walk back to the station taking in the unbelievable views of autumn time bliss in Bern.  In the first picture you can see the glorious alp mountain range