Swiss Holidays: Montreaux to Bern to Thun

The next morning I felt much better, and was eager for breakfast after having missed dinner the night before. Our hosts invited us upstairs to their kitchen, then left us alone with a spread of breads, meats, cheeses, and yogurts at a table with an amazing view overlooking the lake and mountains.

When they returned, we asked about a photo of a fox sitting on the window ledge. "That's our fox," they explained. "He comes around here almost every night. Sometimes he comes inside and sits on the floor mat just inside the door. We're surprised you didn't see him."

A pet fox! It's my dream house.

After breakfast they proposed a tour of their garden. David investigated the terraced layers and lily pond, while Madame introduced me to her herb garden. She tore leaves off each plant and invited me to smell at least half a dozen different types of basil and thyme that I'd never even heard of.  I thought of my sad little herb garden in boxes on my concrete balcony and felt like such a culinary gardening amateur.

Finally we set out again, but instead of driving directly down the mountain we drove up to the next little town of Caux. We walked around the little mountain-climbing funicular station and took in the view before boarding the car and descending down to Montreux again.

We went directly to Château Chillon, perched on a rocky outcropping in Lake Geneva. As is custom, we rented one audio guide and I listened and repeated the highlights whilst David took photos.

Château Chillon is perhaps best known for a famous political prisoner who was kept there for six years. We'd never heard of the prisoner, but apparently Lord Byron wrote a poem about him called "The Prisoner of Chillon". In the dungeon you can see a stone pillar where the visiting Lord Byron had scratched his name.

After our visit we stopped for a quick lunch of lake perch before continuing along our route. We must have been less than an hour from Montreaux when David pointed to a highway exit sign: "Ausfahrt". We were already in German-speaking Switzerland. Just one day into our holiday and already at a language disadvantage!

We had an hour and a half to our destination of the day, but halfway along we decided to take a break in the city of Bern.

I didn't have a huge desire to see Bern until we learned that they keep bears. Bern is named after bears, of course, and the city has kept bears for centuries. So we parked at the edge of the city and took a short walk to the bear pens, where we saw one big hot bear, one momma bear, and two tumbly cubs. Cute.

After having our fill of bears we walked into town for a bit. By then most of the shops were closed, so we stopped in a convenience shop for a bottle of water for the trip and returned to the car.

Forty minutes later, we were climbing another mountainside, looking for another hotel without a specific GPS identity outside the city of Thun. Without too much trouble we finally found Hotel Alpenblick and were shown to a small room with another incredible view. This one overlooked looming mountains in the distance, Lake Thun at their feet, and emerald green rolling hills just in front of our window. The clanging of cowbells was the only sound as a small herd of cattle grazed their way along the hillside.

We sat in awe on the small wooden balcony for a few minutes before running downstairs to catch dinner before the hotel restaurant closed. We had a quiet table on the terrace, where we lingered over a fine meal of prawns with melon and sausage with potatoes (you can guess whom had which meal). We watched the setting sun change the color of the mountains minute by minute, and finally retired to our room.