Switzerland is absolutely gorgeous. The city of Bern (what we've seen so far has been in the "Old City" area) is wonderfully quaint, and bustling with an Old World feeling. The streets are paved in paving brick, and there are regularly-placed stone fountains with continuous streams of crystal clear water to drink. People simply plunge bottles into the stream, or push their faces in for a drink. The water (even from a tap) is delicious, and tastes like bottled mineral water. Many of these fountains have cute sculptures atop them (one particularly creepy one was of a dwarvish looking being eating babies).
There are green hills and valleys flanking ebulliant blue-green streams dotted with swimmers and sunbathers who have emerged from their red tile roofed house to enjoy the beautiful weather. We rode through some extremely pastoral mountain forests on the way into Bern, spotting the occasional hiker or cleared hillside full of cows. In the distance loomed craggy snow-capped peaks the likes of which can only be matched by the Rockies in the USA. Michael apparently has a landscape photo cap that he's imposed upon himself, but I'm beyond excited to attempt to capture this gorgeous scenery.
The Swiss Franc is pretty close to the US Dollar as well, about $1.04 to the Franc, but prices are HIGH. We picked up pasta, sauce, and sausage from a grocery along with bread and eggs for breakfast, as well as some Swiss beer and chocolate. We cooked and ate with an Australian girl who suggested a beautiful hike tomorrow, which we'll be up fairly early to do, timing it so that when the weather gets hot tomorrow afternoon, we'll have arrived at one of those aforementioned blue-green mountain streams for a swim.
Alas, we only have six days in this gorgeous country!
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