Bern, Switzerland

We crossed back over the mountains to get back to Switzerland. That 13 miles stretch of road was NO JOKE. We had gotten to be a little on the early bird side so we were to Bern well before check in time at the hotel. This was no problem as we just left our bags in the trunk of the car. It is one of the best parts of having a car. I hate just leaving my luggage places. Anyway, the hotel was a bit outside of town so they gave you free transit passes. It was a nice touch.

Waiting on a train

We kind of forgot to check directions before we left the hotel so we got on the train and to the correct station, but the good part ended there. We went the wrong way out of the station and got super turned around. This never goes well. We eventually found our way back to where we'd meant to head initially, but it left us both irritated.

City views

Bern is the capital of Switzerland and this is the
Parliament Building 

Bern's famous clock-tower 

Their baked goods looked amazing

By this point in the trip we'd kind of worn ourselves out on just strolling through cities. We sometimes forget when we are booking trips just how much we prefer to be out hiking versus in cities jammed with people. We eventually snapped out of our funk and made the best of the afternoon, though. It turned out that Albert Einstein lived in Bern from 1903 to 1905 and developed his theory of relativity while living there. It is now a museum that charges admission once you reach a certain point. The attendant had stepped away so Jackson kept climbing, but as I was unwilling to go to a Swiss jail, though I assume it would be just lovely, I waited at the bottom. Good sense eventually took over and he came back down. We opted not to pay the admission fee and just marveled at the free parts!

Sneaking up Einstein's steps

Einstein once climbed these!
*This was the free part

We continued to wander around the old town of Bern amazed at how well it has been preserved. It was truly like taking a step back in time.

A gorgeous church in town

The city was so pretty

A better view of the church

It looks like Disney, doesn't it?!

It was finally lunch time and Jackson was beside himself with joy that this part of Switzerland had "wurst stands" which are just street carts that sell sausage. He got a spicy sausage and I had a regular hot dog. They have entire rolls that the shove a pole into removing the center and inserting the condiment and sausage. This makes it great for eating on the street. We joined all the locals in getting our sausages and drinks and then just sitting on the curb for a little makeshift picnic. Jackson could not have been more pleased. I did not realize that the final bites would be pretty messy and had a ketchup explosion. First timers!

Jackson's favorite part? That this part of Switzerland is more
German and therefore serves sausages

Once we'd had lunch and realized some bad weather was likely headed our way, we opted to head back to the hotel. It turns out getting to the train station was much easier than getting to town from it had been. We even stumbled upon my favorite Swiss bakery, Sprüngli, in the train station so I was able to score the best macaroons on the planet. This bakery is headquartered in Zurich so we'd been two years ago and I still dreamed of their macaroons. While they've got a lot of locations around Switzerland, and at least 5 in the Zurich airport, their only other locations are in Dubai and Abu Dhabi! Once we'd loaded up on cookies, we caught the train headed back towards our hotel so that we could hit the indoor waterpark in the attached mall. What's that? A hotel attached to a mall with a movie theater and waterpark inside seems odd? Agreed. Allow me to introduce BernAqua.

BernAqua

Looking down into part of the facility

Part of the outdoor pool
Please notice the built-in loungers to the left

Another one of the pools

The Holiday Inn had a partnership with BernAqua so that its guests got 4 hours of free access to the facility. You just had to walk through the entire mall in your swimming gear to get there. No big deal. We'll never see these people again. We got inside and it was like no place we'd been before. It was so futurist-looking, but the way folks acted was like the very distant past. There were only 4 lifeguards for the entire place. It think I read that there were 16 different pools in all. There were 4 waterslides. Once was concrete for some reason and darn near killed me at the end due to the force of the water shooting you out and kind of holding you under the water. I'd been so worried about not banging my knee that I didn't think about how this wild ride would spit you out. The other waterslides were the normal plastic tubing and far more fun. We played for hours in the place. We just kept exploring all of the different pools with their varying levels of salt content and various temperatures. They had hot tubs and cold tubs. They had a sensory deprivation floating room. They had a steam room. They had indoor and outdoor pools. You name it, they had it. We'd gone at a very quiet time so we rarely waited to get on any of the slides and most of the time had pools to ourselves.

The place also had a sauna facility so we decided to end our time there. Unbeknownst to me, for "hygiene" reasons, the wearing of a swimsuit was not allowed in the sauna areas. They had both all female and mixed sex saunas. I hit the ladies area first as Jackson was still going down slides. Once I realized that we were supposed to be naked I had a bit of a shock. Then I remembered that Jackson wouldn't be allowed in this area and I'd have to go to the mixed sex side to find him. Well, I found a lot of naked men and no Jackson. I eventually gave up, traumatized, and headed for the locker hoping to find Jackson eventually. Once I did finally find him we had a good laugh about him going around the mixed sex nude area looking for his "American wife" in each room. Oh man. I'm sure the Swiss had a good laugh at us for that whole confusing episode.

We left the waterpark and walked, dripping wet, back through the mall to our hotel. We stopped at one of the grocery stores in the mall (there were 4!) to grab some good chocolate to take home and get some drinks. No one even blinked that we were in our swimsuits and wrapped in towels. God bless the Swiss.

The weather really broke loose while we were in the waterpark so we opted to just have dinner in one of the mall's restaurants instead of catching the train back to old town in the rain. We were kind of tired of the insane prices of food in Switzerland at this point and decided to do something a little wild and try a new type of food as it was a bit less expensive than the rest. Somehow neither of us had ever had Thai food so in we went to Cha Cha Thai. We got a sampler platter for two and also picked a safe choice of fried rice. We ended up really enjoying the food. It was certainly different, but that isn't always a bad thing.

Why not try Thai food for the first time while
you're in Switzerland?!

Once we'd had dinner and finished strolling the mall marveling at all the interesting shops and people in it, we opted to call it a night. We retired to our room and watched Swiss television for the first time. They had a show similar to American's Funniest Home Videos that was universally enjoyable. Oh man, what a funny day we had. I don't think either of us will ever forget our time spent marveling at the odd place that was BernAqua.