Bern & Murten - Switzerland Highlights - Day 12

On our last day in Switzerland we woke up in Bern.  Then we did a walking tour of the town with my mom.  One highlight of the tour is Bern’s famous clock tower (build in 1530) that springs to life before the top of each hour,  A jester rings bells by pulling a string,  Father time has an hourglass he flips over.  A figure at the top of the tower that rings a bell.  I’m sure 500 years ago this was a riot of entertainment.

Then we hopped on a train to the nearby lakeside town of Murten.  Murten is a small town that is well maintianed.  The walls around the town are in good shape.  We ate lunch here in Murten and got a feel for the town.  I enjoyed the flowers under the windows, the tall pointy spires on towers and the large awnings.

Then we got back on the train and returned to Bern to pick up our bags from the hostel.  We boarded a train heading to the Basel airport.  The Basel airport sits of the border of Switzerland, Germany and France.  From there we flew over to Paris.  We only booked two nights in Paris.  We got there late for our first night, probably around 11pm.

Bern & Interlaken - Switzerland Highlights - Day 11

On Day 11 of our European vacation, our last in Mürren, we cable-carred down the hill then bussed to the Trummelbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen.

The 10 waterfalls inside a mountain are accessible via elevator and stairs allowing us to watch the Jungfrau’s glacial melt rush to the valley floor.  We walked through chasms the water carved out over the ages.  The glacial melt rushed passed us in a constant roar.  I couldn’t help but wonder if these falls inspired Walt Disney as he planned the caves of the Matterhorn ride.

The water spins through a corkscrew feature before finally dumping onto the Lauterbrunnen valley floor.  Then it flows to Interlaken the same place we wanted to visit.  We took the 20 minute train ride to Interlaken and followed a printed walking tour of the town.  We lunched on the 18th floor of the Metropolitan Hotel, otherwise known as the concrete shame of Interlake.  We watched base jumpers land in a nearby park.

In the 1800s well-to-do tourists made Interlaken a major stop on the “Grand Tour of Europe”.  The town catered to the rich and famous of the day.  In recent decades many tourists, like us, chose to stay higher in the alps.  Today tourists from India dominate tourism in Interlaken thanks in part to the many Bollywood films shot in here.

After lunch we walked across the river and along luxurious homes perched beside beautiful water.

Then we continued our train ride over to Bern.  We wanted to spend at least one night there to get a feel for Switzerland’s capital city.  We walked around the city at dusk.  We gave the Parliament building much attention.  Throughout the city the Swiss post statues on columns.  One famous statue features an ogre eating babies.

The people of Bern preserved Albert Einstein’s home as a museum.  A poster of Einstein hangs in a window of his old home.   We walked to the far end of town with thunder crackling in the distance before heading back to our hostel to end the night.