May 8, 2013

We've had a busy 2 days.  But it looks like the sun is coming out.  Yay!  I’m tired of wearing 3 layers of clothes.  Whine, moan, complain.

We left my city Tuesday morning.  Someone fetched the car from who knows where and brought it to us.  It only cost 48 Swiss Francs per day to leave it parked somewhere.  Somehow, we got out of Geneva without too much trouble and headed to Bern.  We drove along Lake Geneva and it was so pretty.  We got to a border crossing and encountered a deviation.  (detour).  Border crossing?  Yup, we were back in France.  But nobody checks anything. We traveled along on N5 Ave de Genève through Aubonne, Douvaine, Massongy, Sciez, Amphion les Bains when we came across Evian les Bains which had a huge casino!  This is the Evian from where the water comes from. 

We stopped at the casino and went in.  We had to show id to enter the casino.  But they had clean bathrooms, so that was good.  For fun bc put 20 Swiss Francs in the change machine but it kept spitting it out.  Then we realized, duh, we’re in France.  Bc dug out 20 Euros and voila!  Twenty 1 dollar Euros clanged down into our bucket.  Have you ever tried to play a slot machine that is only written in French?  We promptly lost all our 20 Euros. (Andy, must we claim our gambling losses on our taxes next year?) We did get our parking violated so that means it only cost us 20 Euros to go to the bathroom!  Lake Geneva was beautiful from across the street of the casino. 

Back on the road and right away we saw signs for the “Le Temple du Fromage.”  Kate, I think this is as close to a cheese church you’re going to get.  We found it around some winding roads, but it was closed! 

We continued driving through Tourronde, Meillere, Bret and came upon the border control into Switzerland at St. Gingolph.  We were asked to stop, but waved on with no problem.  Whew!

Here's some of the scenery we got to see.

 

We had lunch in Villaneuve at a very nice place on the lake called L’Omnia.  I had salmon and bc had a burger.  Both were excellent. 

We had a little trouble getting out of Montreaux (where bc says is the famous jazz festival), but somehow got Francine to figure it out.  We drove to Bern and only got lost a little in Bern.  We stayed at the Best Western Bristol Inn.  It was quite nice.  We walked all over Bern, had a refreshing drink,  rested a bit at the hotel, then went to dinner.  

Here's an interesting window shopping view.

That's a model covered with post it notes.....

We wanted to try fondue.  The main language in Bern is German, so we switched gears again.  Just when you get your “Bonjour, Merci” going, it becomes, well, I don’t know German at all, so we say “Hello Thank you” and get along fine.  Anyway, we walked to the fondue restaurant and had a delightful waitress.  She helped us order cheese, truffles and champagne fondue.  It comes with bread.  Thank goodness we ordered one to share!  It was delicious but very filling.  After we had had enough of fondue we ordered a plain salad.  It was great!  Nice and crunchy and refreshing after the fondue. 

This morning packed up and headed to the Bern Historical Museum.  We only got lost a couple of times as it was close to the hotel!  Bc even found the parking meter thing and threw in some money to buy a ticket for our windshield.  We wanted to see the Albert Einstein exhibit.  We found they were also having an exhibit on the Terra Cotta Warriors from China.  We paid our fee for the museum, then an addition 5 Swiss Francs each for the audio tour for the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit.  It was very good.  We have seen the excavation pit(s) of Terra Cotta Warriors when we were in China in 2001.  That was truly amazing, but I felt that this exhibit went into some interesting history of why and how they were made.  Then we found that we had to buy another audio set (for another 5 francs each) for the Einstein exhibit.  We had to rush through this due to our parking meter time.  However, it was very interesting.  Einstein was incredibly intelligent, duh, but not always very nice or even a very good student.

 In any case, we left and found our way to the Paul Klee museum to see his works.  I would have liked to see more of his color abstract pieces, but this was still a worthwhile visit.  The building is amazing!

After a quick lunch at the Klee museum we headed to Lucerne.  After much arguing with Francine she finally figured out we wanted to take the scenic route Hwy 10 and not the motor way 6.  We drove through many, many little towns, each with their own rotary in the center.  Worb, Zaziwill, Bowill, Barau and Wiggen where we pulled off onto Rotgutmoos so bc could take some pictures.  Aren’t they wonderful?

Back on the road driving through Eschozmatt, Wolhusen, Hasle Lu, Ebnet, Blatten and then into Lucerne.  Francine was getting very upset with us because we wouldn't drive through the center of a  plaza, complete with café seating, to get to our hotel Romantik Wilden Mann. 

We have a lovely room, quite large.  

After I finish writing this, we will go for a walk about in the old part of Lucerne and have some dinner. 

I wanted to mention our car.  You can see it in the picture above.  It's a Mercedes.   Andy would ask which kind and I would say, "black".  But then it is very dirty.  It doesn't have any numbers on the back, but it's a station wagon type of car. It's quite nice but does have it's idiosyncratic issues.  For example, the radio comes on randomly every so often.  It's usually some man speaking in French or German and if we turn him off, it turns off Francine also.  So, we've learned the trick.  When the radio starts talking I push the radio button then push the navigation button twice.  Of course this happens at the least convenient time.   

After dinner I will upload pictures and with any luck, post this! 

We hope you are enjoying reading this blog.  We miss you all and send our best.  Love, bc and gc