Two Nights in Bern

It seems that no matter how long our time is in any one place, it is never enough.  This was certainly true of our time in Bern because we had only one and a half days and two nights to enjoy all that Bern had to offer. We decided to spend our time in Bern’s Old Town, to enjoy the medieval and renaissance buildings.  We were fortunate enough to be able to book rooms in the Bellevue Palace, a beautiful hotel owned by the Swiss Confederation, and where guests of state stay when in Bern.

After checking into our rooms, we decided to go out for dinner at the Restaurant Essort and then walk around Old Town. As we walked back to the hotel, along the river, we discovered that we had unknowingly timed our visit to Bern to coincide with the  August 2018 Busker Festival!  We spent the night walking around town and enjoying the various musical acts.

Usually, our time in any place is filled with back-to-back excursions.  There is always so much to see and so little time to see it, that we try to cram as much activity into the day as we can. Bern was much more relaxed, as we booked no excursions and decided to spend the second day (our only full day), walking around and seeing the sights.

We let half our group sleep in, but Jesse, Mike, and I went out for a walk to see some of the city. We walked around a bit, took some photos of the Bundeshaus ( the parliament building), the Barenplatz fountain, and the Weltpostdenknal sculpture, and then decided to meet up with the rest of our group back at the hotel. After getting the entire group together we went on a walk to see the Zytglogge and to track down all the Renaissance fountains. Click here to read about the Renaissance Fountains of Bern!

After we found the last fountain we crossed to the Aare River and took photos of the Nydeggbrucke bridge and the Barengraben (the bear park). We decided to have lunch at the Altes Tramdepot Brauerei Restaurant, out on the terrace. We ordered a 3-liter beer tower with our meal and ended up sharing a Berner Platte ( a dish dating back to the 1700s featuring a variety of meats and sauerkraut.) For dessert, we had ice cream at the Gelateria Eiswerkstaff, in the same building. 

We walked back to the hotel along the river under a huge bridge called Kirchenfeld Burke. As we walked back to the hotel we saw a group of swimmers who had hopped into the Aare and were letting the current float them downstream. In all, it was a beautiful, relaxing, summer day in Bern.

That night we had dinner at the Vue Brasserie and Terrace at the Bellevue Palace and planned our next day’s adventure – Our castle day trip from Bern to Zermatt!