Picking up the pace

The past couple of days of grandma and grandpa’s visit have been packed with activities. We checked off some things that we’ve wanted to do, and it was fun to share it with them. On Friday, after the kids got home from school, we took grandma and grandpa to Bern. We visited the Rosengarten for the first time, which has a beautiful rose garden with fountains (hence the name), a stunning view over the old town, and a fun playground for the kids.  After spending some time there, we walked down the hill to the Barengraben to show grandma and grandpa the bears of Bern.

Friday night, grandma and grandpa generously offered to watch the kids so Joe and I could have a night out. I met up with him in Bern, and we had a fantastic dinner sitting on the terrace of the Casino Restaurant.  The Casino is not a place for gambling as you might think, but rather the theater for the Berner Symphonieorchester.  We even went into the lobby after dinner and heard the last few minutes of a Strauss concerto for French horn. By the end of the day we both agreed that the city of Bern is beautiful, historical, easy to get around, culturally active… it’s really growing on us.

On Saturday we crossed off another big thing we have wanted to do: raft the Aare river from Thun to Bern.  Grandpa, Joe and I took the older two kids to Thun where we rented all the rafting equipment. We spent the next three hours floating down the clear blue water of the Aare with the sun over our heads and the mountains at our backs.  This is typically a very popular thing to do, especially in the summer. But, it is late enough in the season that we hardly saw anyone on the river during the first half of our journey.  As we got closer to Bern, there were more people swimming, sun bathing, river surfing, and generally trying to enjoy this unusually beautiful weather in late September. After returning home, we capped off the day with a traditionally Swiss raclette dinner and a campfire in our backyard.

Grandma and grandpa’s visit is quickly coming to an end. Tomorrow, we will once again stay around Münsingen and try to fit in a few fun things while we pack for our respective travels.  We plan to take them to the Dampfbahn and to the Gasthof Löwen, the oldest restaurant in Switzerland, which is located right here in our town.

We got some great pictures in the past couple of days, which you can see here.