23-25 June BERN, Switzerland 3294 Miles

It took me ages to draw this.

There are some readers out there who seem very interested in driving minutiae - so here are a couple of driving facts. We seem to be averaging 10litres of diesel per 100miles (which seems really good), and on average, if we include the week we spent in Sicily, we are driving a bit over 35 miles a day.

Bern - capital of Switzerland! It is very odd to drive for a couple of hours from Geneva, where they speak French, to here, where they speak German. A bit of research on the internet confirms that the three groups of Swiss (French, German and Italian) don't have any 'shared ethnic identity', but do feel strongly Swiss. There has been a Swiss confederation since the early part of the 13th century. It is very interesting to compare it an island like NZ (or Auzzie) where the notion of the country itself is so strongly defined by the sea, of having a definite edge - it's not like that in Europe.

The river coming into Bern - the colour is even more amazing than it looks here. 

Looking the other way, over the bear park and towards the bridge leading to the old town.

Bears. They are having a sleep after having been fed their daily allotment of tourists.

Anyway, Bern was a lot of fun. It has a fascinating old city built on a promontory with a main market street running through the middle. The street is split into various sections by clock towers, and each section has several fountains (Ogre Fountain was a favourite). All the buildings have arcades built into the front, and the old cellars have been turned into funky little shops and bars.

The legend goes that Bern is named after bears, which are the symbol of the city, and they have been keeping bears on the banks of the river since the early days of the city. They looked pretty comfortable.

While in Bern we did the usual - up the steeple for a bit of a look around, a cruise up and down the streets, a bit of shopping and a bit of eating. Overall, a truly lovely city - and spotlessly clean. Which is nice.

We would have liked to have stayed longer and seen the new city on the other side of the river - but the weather forecast told us we had a limited period of clear weather for the Alps, so we decided to keep moving.

I also love the funky eaves going on. Bern was weirdly quiet on the weekdays.

They had these fun running streams of water, which were fascinating to dogs and small children.

One of the many fountains, this one is Hercules, I think. Definitely not the Einstein Fountain as a I  originally identified it.

One of the old cellars, which is now a shop.

Jane is smiling because she is about to have the best Mexican food EVER!

There it is - see how jealous those people in the background are?

The Parliament Building.

A statue of a lady in front of a building.

Bundesplatz, in front of the Parliament building.

The decorations above the door to the Cathedral.

Views from the top of the steeple.

This is an automatic defibrillator for treating someone who is having a heart attack. I like the instructions 'remove at heart' - yep, that will stop it alright.

This staircase gave us the heebies. This is that feeling you get when you are somewhere high up, and you feel like you might accidentally hurl yourself off the edge. Or through the gap in this case.

A moan about driving on the motorways in Europe. All of the trucks are speed limited to 90km an hour, which is fine. However, inevitably some of them end up going 89kmh and others will go 91kmh and you end up with this - one truck passing another with a speed difference of about 2kmh. It's really bad when there is a whole line of them doing it.....grrrrrrrr.

Two weirdoes of the week - this guy, who I presume was filming some sort of Japanese clothing commercial....

.....and this lass, who is taking her horn for a walk.