Switzerland
Day 10 - Friday, 9 June 2000
Today was a rather lazy day. Carolyn woke up with a pain in her lower back so she wasn't up to a strenuous day. Apparently neither was Geri or I. We quickly agreed that we wouldn't do much and Geri went back to bed after breakfast.
About 11 AM we headed down to the schiffstation and boarded one of the Lake Thun ferries at 11:09. I noticed that the upper deck offered a better view so suggested that we head up there. As we got to the bottom of the stairs a sign seemed to suggest that only 1st class passengers were allowed upstairs.
Swans on the Aare River in Thun.
(This photo appears on page 7 of the
2004 Untours
catalog.)
Geri urged us on so I followed. A few minutes later the ticket checker came by. When he saw that our Swiss passes were for second class passage he urged us to head downstairs. We did.
We stopped at about three places on the other side of the lake before backing into the schiffstation at Thun, right across the street from the bahnhof. Bus stations are always adjacent to the bahnhof (train station). Note how cleverly the Swiss transportation system is put together. You can go just about anywhere without walking very far when switching between train, bus, boat or cable car.
During the ride we chatted with two American young ladies. One goes to the University of Utah and the other is living Isreal. Each year they meet in a different country and travel together.
We arrived in Thun just before noon so we began looking for a neat place to eat. After walking for awhile we came across an Italian restaurant right beside the Aare River that flows through Thun on its way to Berne. We sat right by the water.
There we a couple dozen of swans (maybe more) gliding around on the river along with several ducks. Geri let one of the swans take some food from her hand.
The Aare River in Thun.
After lunch we walked around a bit crossing the river twice and then headed back to the boat station. Once we discovered that the next boat wouldn't leave for 30 minutes we walking across the street to check out the train situation. There was one leaving for Spiez in five minutes. It was already sitting there so we hopped on and arrive back at the Spiez bahnhof at 2:09.
Instead of taking our normal route back down to the apartment we walked down Seestrasse so we could look in the shop windows. Along the way we picked up a box of iced tea, a box of juice and the largest can of Coke you've ever seen. The can holds 1/2 liter of Coke. The items cost a total of Sfr 3.55 ($2.20). One item was Sfr 1.95 ($1.21)(probably the juice) another was 0.70 ($0.43) and the other was 0.90 ($0.56). Note that things are not incredibly expensive here as some would have you believe.
It was probably around 3 PM when we arrived back at the apartment. Carolyn and Geri immediately hit the sack for a snooze. A little later I followed for 30 minutes or so. Other than a some snoozing we read away the afternoon and evening.