Switzerland

On 10/10/10 Steffen and I packed up for one last road trip before I head back to Australia. Originally we were just going to go down to Switzerland for the day but then Steffen surprised me and made it into an overnight trip where we would stay at the Steigenburger hotel in Konstanz, a town just on the German and Swiss border. The drive down was nice and luckily we were rented out an Alfa Romeo so we didn't stand out in the car park of the hotel which was full of huge Audi's, BMW's and all that. The hotel sat right on the lake and was gorgeous And because Steffen works with the Steigenburger group we only had to pay what a guests would usually pay for just breakfast. The afternoon was simple, Konstanz is a really beautiful little place and it's hard to imagine that it's just a lake that you see not an ocean. The next morning we had breakfast and then went into Switzerland. Unfortunately for us it wasn't a clear day so we couldn't see the alps at all, whereas if it were clear we would have been able to see them perfectly from at least Bern. We passed Zurich and crossed a large amount of Switzerland (within 1.5 hrs) to reach the city of Bern. Once there we swapped over some money- Swiss money is so funny, the notes look like tickets for an event or something- and then wandered around in the cold. The main reason for going to Bern was to see the bears. Bears have been kept in the 'bear pit' since 1857 however now they have a newer and fancier Bärengraben which is on the river.

Old bear pit

New bear pit

We realised how expensive Switzerland is as well while here, it was truly unbelievable, so we spent no time shopping and after walking through the city a bit more we grabbed something from Starbucks and drove into the mountains a bit as I wanted a picture before heading home. We never got that picture and as soon as we started driving out of Bern the sun came out. Nevertheless it was still a great time and a fun road trip.