Zurich and Bern

Zurich and Bern

Zurich

Return trip from Italy created an opportunity to visit Switzerland, and two of it’s major cities – Zurich and Bern.

Zurich welcomed us with with rainy weather, but that did not stop us from spending the day walking around the city. Having only one day, we choose to spend it in the center of the town, around the Limat river and the Zurich Lake.

Having been neutral, Switzerland was spared armed conflicts of XX century, and today we can witness it’s history through it’s architecture.

There are many places worth seeing in Zurich, and to get a good view we went first to the Lindenhof – an old Roman castle. From there we went down, towards the Lake and Opera, and finally turned around north, towards Bahnhofstrasse.

Bern below the gallery⬇️⬇️⬇️

Bern

Bern is only fifth largest city of Switzerland, but it is its de-facto capital and seat of federal government. It is located about 100km south-west from Zurich. You can cover that distance in one and half hour by car, or in an hour – by train.

The weather in Bern was much more pleasant, even with some sunshine in the second part of the day.

We focused our sightseeing on the old town, built on a hill surrounded from three sides by Aare river.

The name of the city means “bear” and the bear is ubiquitous – on flags, buildings and even… live bears are kept in the “bear pit” by the river, next to the Nydeggbrücke.

We walked around Altstadt (the Old City) and crossed two bridges – Kirchenfeldbrücke and Nydeggbrücke. Those are high ones and they offer great views.

Good viewing points are also Bern Münsterplattform (view platform by the cathedral) and the hill with Rosengarten on the east bank of Aare.

With clouds higher than yesterday we hoped to see the snow-covered Alps in the south-east. And we did, at the end of our tour, when we were returning from the north side via Kornhausbrücke bridge.

Zurich, 19 March 2017