Hoogeveen Vacation - June 8 & 9

Carsten, Mom, and I took a break from traveling on June 8 to do laundry and prepare for our weekend trip since Andy mentioned he may be able to take the day off on June 9 (Thursday) and travel with us. Ashley, Dad, and Luke went to the Swiss History Museum in Zurich for the afternoon, and I think they had fun :).

Andy was able to take Thursday off (thanks for getting all your work done Andy!), so we all went to Bern, which is the capitol of Switzerland. Once we got ourselves oriented (thanks Dad and Andy!), we started walking in the old town, which is characterized by cute old buildings, fountains (which you can drink out of), a famous clock, bears (Bern!), a beautiful old church, and a river which meanders around the town.

This is the famous clock. Also, Einstein lived around this street and I think this clock holds special significant to Einstein's work. We also got to see it go, although the glockenspiel in Munich is much better :).

This is the most famous fountain: 'The ogre eating a baby'. Don't really know why...

Most of us with the river. Luke had bridge envy.

 Bern means bear. So naturally, there must be bears in the city. When I was here in 2003, the bears were in a small pit, which seemed a pitiful... They made them new enclosures which overlook the river. We got to see twin cubs play fighting, which was fun :).

eating lunch by the bears :).

This is the beautiful church which would have been even better if they weren't working on the tower.

We decided that we needed some culture so we went to the Paul Klee museum. This turned out to be quite a dud, with the major attraction being the building it's housed in (which we could have seen for free :) ). Maybe art + us is just not a good combination.

Next we went to the rose garden, which overlooked the old town and had BEAUTIFUL roses. The only sad part was that it was slightly rainy and overcast, so the pictures don't quite show what we were seeing. We spent quite a bit of time here and took a lot of photos.... :)

Happy 30th Anniversary trip Mom and Dad!

notice my 'fizzle fountain'.

Andy is much better at this than the rest of us, especially me :).

Carsten got to ride in his new Kanga Kid (by Deuter) backpack. He did really well, and we think that the most useless thing to bring on this trip (at this stage in his life) is the stroller. He really doesn't sit well in it and for the most part, never naps in it, unlike most other children we see. So having other ways to carry him is essential. 

After the rose garden we walked back up through the rest of the old town, got some pastries, and then made our way to the main government building (pictured below). It's amazingly old (1291) and pretty. We were hoping to get to go in, but it wasn't open to the public on that day, so maybe next time we are there :).

We had a great day with everyone and it was a good start to our weekend vacation :). I just had to post a couple photos of Andy playing with Carsten on the train ride back home... :)

we may have had some fun with his hair... :)