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| Zoom up for a better pic! |
Although, we did take a boat to get near the falls, and we went up the rock in the middle of the falls, where the Swiss flag is (lower right pic). That's where I took the panoramic. Waterfall aside, I quite enjoyed talking to the other interns that were on the trip! Many of them were not from Canada; there were interns from Norway, Poland, China, even Peru!
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Because I am lazy, I'm going to squish my trip to Bern in here as well.
We took a train there, for CHF 19. I'm so glad I have the Halbtax, otherwise it would've been CHF 38! The Gleis7 combination that we could get with the Halbtax makes it even better because I get to ride the trains and a lot of buses for FREE after 7!
Anyways, in Bern we did quite a bit of sightseeing. The first thing we saw was a most interesting clock tower:
I thought the bottom part was very pretty looking, I think it's a calendar! But we watched what happened when the clock struck 12. If you zoom up, you can see that there is a jester and a rooster. At 12, it's not just the bell ringing, the jester rings the bells and the rooster makes a strange sound. They're timed differently too, so they aren't all ringing at the same time. I have a video, but I'm too lazy to figure out why it's not working on blogger right now.
We went to some church afterward...St. Petersburg? I don't remember. It's been almost 3 weeks since I went. It was very ornate..but honestly, I'm so tired of just visiting churches. It feels so weird going in as a tourist and it feels like I shouldn't be there. Without anyone praying or worshiping there, I don't even want to call it a church, it's just another pretty building. It is VERY tall though. When I took a picture of Bern from the rose garden, this stood out like a sore thumb.
There was a bear pit in Bern, but the bears looked so sad :(
The enclosures they are in are so small compared to the ones they get at the Calgary Zoo. Apparently they don't have anymore bears in the mountains around Switzerland, so this is a rare sight for the Swiss. Needless to say, we didn't stay for very long.
Next was the the rose garden! I can't really call it a rose garden because I only saw one white rose...I guess they don't bloom in May though. There were a lot of other flowers though!
It was very enjoyable to just walk through, and it was for FREE. Which is great. Really great. However, this garden was at the top of a hill. It was a rather steep walk, I swear it was at least a 45 degree incline, maybe even 60 degrees! Or maybe I was just out of shape.
After walking down said steep hill, we headed to the History of Bern museum. We originally intended to go into the Einstein museum, but the staff said we wouldn't have enough time to go through everything before the museum closed. I guess 2h isn't enough, it is enough time to walk through every exhibit in the History of Bern portion though! Or that's what they claimed. I felt it wasn't enough time, we were rushing through the last couple of exhibits.
Here's something that really caught my eye, the swords were massive, I don't know how anyone could've swung those things; plus all the armor they were wearing. You'll notice that I used flash to take this picture...which I wasn't supposed to do. I honestly didn't know, and a lady came and sternly talked to me afterwards. But the picture was so worth it! There was no way I could've taken such a nice picture without flash, it would've been so blurry. Now I can remember these weapons forever :)
Funny thing about the Swiss is that they were known as violent mercenaries in the past.
After rushing through the museum, we ended up at the Botanical Garden. Unfortunately, many of the exhibitions were closed, aside from the free garden that many people seem to stroll through like a park. It wasn't as pretty as the rose garden, but my roommates (they went with me to Bern) found a new friend here:
His/Her It's name is Fred. Who am I talking about? The snail of course. They seem to have some sort of obsession with snails here. Although after looking at them for a while, they start to look pretty cute...better than the slugs at any rate. Did I mention that more recently, they brought a toad back home?! At least they didn't keep it...or at least, I hope they didn't O.o It better not be dead in one of their rooms.
Personally, I enjoyed Bern a lot more than Zurich. It might have something to do with the fact that I wore comfortable shoes this time. But there seemed to be a lot more to do in terms of sightseeing in Bern. We actually spent a full day and took the train back home after 7pm.
Note: I've been meaning to blog about every trip I take, but I've fallen so far behind already >< It would take me ages to catch up! I will probably select certain trips to blog about...but you'll never know if I missed one!
We took a train there, for CHF 19. I'm so glad I have the Halbtax, otherwise it would've been CHF 38! The Gleis7 combination that we could get with the Halbtax makes it even better because I get to ride the trains and a lot of buses for FREE after 7!
Anyways, in Bern we did quite a bit of sightseeing. The first thing we saw was a most interesting clock tower:
I thought the bottom part was very pretty looking, I think it's a calendar! But we watched what happened when the clock struck 12. If you zoom up, you can see that there is a jester and a rooster. At 12, it's not just the bell ringing, the jester rings the bells and the rooster makes a strange sound. They're timed differently too, so they aren't all ringing at the same time. I have a video, but I'm too lazy to figure out why it's not working on blogger right now.
We went to some church afterward...St. Petersburg? I don't remember. It's been almost 3 weeks since I went. It was very ornate..but honestly, I'm so tired of just visiting churches. It feels so weird going in as a tourist and it feels like I shouldn't be there. Without anyone praying or worshiping there, I don't even want to call it a church, it's just another pretty building. It is VERY tall though. When I took a picture of Bern from the rose garden, this stood out like a sore thumb.
There was a bear pit in Bern, but the bears looked so sad :(
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| The bear looks a lot like Winnie the Pooh, but with a sad face :( |
Next was the the rose garden! I can't really call it a rose garden because I only saw one white rose...I guess they don't bloom in May though. There were a lot of other flowers though!
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| Ada, if you're reading this, here's some pink flowers! They smelled really nice too. |
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| I thought this tulip bunch was stunning. I really liked the colours, it looks beautiful! |
After walking down said steep hill, we headed to the History of Bern museum. We originally intended to go into the Einstein museum, but the staff said we wouldn't have enough time to go through everything before the museum closed. I guess 2h isn't enough, it is enough time to walk through every exhibit in the History of Bern portion though! Or that's what they claimed. I felt it wasn't enough time, we were rushing through the last couple of exhibits.
Funny thing about the Swiss is that they were known as violent mercenaries in the past.
After rushing through the museum, we ended up at the Botanical Garden. Unfortunately, many of the exhibitions were closed, aside from the free garden that many people seem to stroll through like a park. It wasn't as pretty as the rose garden, but my roommates (they went with me to Bern) found a new friend here:
Personally, I enjoyed Bern a lot more than Zurich. It might have something to do with the fact that I wore comfortable shoes this time. But there seemed to be a lot more to do in terms of sightseeing in Bern. We actually spent a full day and took the train back home after 7pm.
Note: I've been meaning to blog about every trip I take, but I've fallen so far behind already >< It would take me ages to catch up! I will probably select certain trips to blog about...but you'll never know if I missed one!
