Bern - yes why not

First time I was in Bern I was looking for a gas station....imagine.  Since then I have been coming there more regularly. The town is very nice and the city center is a treat. Almongst all the cities in Schwitzerland Bern is perhaps the most immediately charming. The city is crammed onto a steep-sided peninsula in a crook of the fast-flowing River Aare. The views when you are walking here is facinating and the cosyness of this city is getting to you. Even after Swiss standard the city center is quiet, and beautiful with its cobbled lanes, lined with sandstone arcaded buildings straddling the pavement.

You can clearly see that this city have  changed  at all in over five hundred years except for the adornment of modern shop signs and the odd car or tram rattling past.

The hills all around, and the steep banks of the river, are still liberally wooded. Views, both of the Old Town’s clustered roofs and of the majestic Alps on the horizon, are breathtaking.

If you first have been to Zürich or Geneva, it’s hard to imagine that Bern – once voted Europe’s most floral city – is the nation’s capital, home of the Swiss parliament and wielder of final federal authority. For all its political status, Bern is a very tiny city of barely 130,000 people and retains a small town’s easy approach to life.

The attraction of the place is its ambience; traffic is kept out of the Old Town and you could spend days just wandering the streets and alleys, café-hopping and – if it’s warm – joining the locals for a plunge into the river. The perfectly preserved medieval street plan, with its arcades, street fountains and doughty towers persuaded UNESCO to deem Bern a World Heritage Site.