bern
Day 11 - Thursday - June 9, 2016
We are leaving Lausanne and heading to Bern, our last destination for this tour. Along the way, we are stopping at Avenches, and then making a lunch stop at Murten. From there it is on to Bern where we will have a tour with a local guide before heading out for our last group farewell dinner.
Our first stop was Avenches. 2,000 years ago, Aventicum, as it was called, was one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire and the Roman capital of Helvetia. In its day, it had a population of 20,000 people. The town has five Roman sights; the amphitheater, a tower, a sanctuary, a theater and a museum. The amphitheater once seated 18,000 and is the largest Roman ruin is Switzerland. Below are a few pictures from our stop in Avenches.
The second stop was Murten for a short visit and lunch. Murten has the finest medieval ramparts in Switzerland that surround the old town of Murten. It has a population of about 5,000. We had a great lunch and then it was on to Bern. Some pictures of our stop in Murten are below.
Later in the day we arrived in Bern, the capital of Switzerland since 1848. Bern has a population of 133,000 people. Bern was founded in 1191 and has managed to avoid war damage. It had a fire sweep through in 1405. Since then, wooden buildings were no longer allowed.
After settling in to our hotel Belle Epoque Bern, we went for a walking tour of Bern with our local guide, Diccon Bewes.
Finally, here are some pictures of our tour buddies that became a family during the tour. We enjoyed traveling with the group and hope to meet up on another tour.
After touring Bern with our local guide, we headed out to our group farewell dinner. This is always a mix of joy and sadness. Joy at meeting all the new wonderful fellow tour members that became family during the course of the tour. Joy at recounting all the wonderful days and times we had during our tour. Sadness that the tour is over too soon. Sadness having to say goodbye to the tour family. Thanks to our Guide Reid and Assistant Guide Fabian for guiding us on a wonderful tour of Switzerland. A truly beautiful country!
Tomorrow we are headed to our next Tour called Rick Steves' My Way Best of Alpine Europe. If you are interested, you can go to a scrapbook of this tour by clicking on Alpine Europe.