2010 Trip to Europe final edition

July 5, 2010 to July 8, 2010 and trip home via Massluis Netherland.

On Monday we drove to Bern the Capital of Switzerland. This is a medieval city with a rich history. We arrived and parked in an underground parking the only type of parking you can access. Switzerland is expensive to us but Bern is real expensive. We have been paying parking of 1 to 2 CNF and hour and here was .90 cnf for 15 minutes or 3.90 and hour. As one lady who was also paying her bill said it is worse than New York.

Other than that the city is a great place to visit. When built centuries ago all the buildings had walking areas under the front of the building. This is nice because if it is raining one can walk the whole city without getting wet or in our case the hot sun as tempatures were 30c again. Marilyn loved looking into the shops as we toured the city.

We decided to do two things. Visit Albert Enstein Home Museum and the Federal Legislature. We booked a time for the goverment tour and worked our way back to the Einstein home. This small and really the only museum on Albert Einstein was well done. It was contained in the two story apartment he had from 1902 to 1909 with his first wife and the place he worked on the theory of relativity. The movie and articles on his life were fascinating. We enjoyed this short visit. The federal government building was just as interesting as we learned how the government of Switzerland works. A beautiful old building. In fact is was hard to believe how good shape some of these old building are in. We took a different route home to see more of the beautiful countryside.

On Tuesday we decided to take a 2.5 hour cruise on the paddle steamer S/S La Suisse. This ship is celebrating it's 100 years of service on Lake Geneve or Lake La Mond.
We went from Lausanne over to the french side and stopped at 3 french towns then around the east end of the lake with a stop at Chateau de Chillion and two more stops coming back up the north side to Lausanne. A great trip on a wonderful sunny day.

Today we went to Geneve. The trip was a short 65km drive to the west end of the lake. We got parked in again high cost parking and went off to book a bus tour. Geneve is spread out so the bus tour seemed the right way to get an overview. Its amazing how many world organizations and private companies have their European head offices in this city. The Banks take up all the prime downtown real estate. We must have seen all the world banks represented. Quite amazing. Geneve is very picturest and we enjoyed our stroll around town after the bus. The beauty of a home exchange is that when you have had enough you can go home. A matter of interest, we stopped at Starbucks for one of their drinks and the cost is double to what it is at home. At 3pm that is exactly what we did; headed to our Lausanne home. We had had enough of museums and old stuff.

Tomorrow we clean up the home here and get ready for our departure early Friday morning. Tomorrow night we do have a special resturant dinner planned. That is if I can find the resturant again. It is out in the rolling hills and comes highly recommended for Suisse menu. On Friday it is off to Alan, Jen and Kylie's for 4 nights then home to Vancouver. We will do some sightseeing with the family but it will be our last chance to have time with Kylie and that we will do.

To close off this blog on this years major holiday we want to say how much we enjoyed our 7 day bike trip. We think of it often and are going to try and plan another through Hungry for next year. Switzerland has lived up to it's reputation. It is a country that we have to say has a higher standard of living than Canada. Great transportation systems, lovely housing, wonderful food, outstanding shopping and all the services you could ever ask for. The Suisse have done it right but at a direct cost. We felt that prices on average were 25% higher than Canada. We found it expensive to live. On the other hand the average wage is 90,000 francs and the franc is about the same as the Canadian dollar. I believe they have little unemployment and we never once in our stay saw any street people begging. That says alot.

Thanks to Yves and Isabelle and Kevin Chatelain for exchanging homes with us and for Alan and family and brother Bruce and family for having us stay. Dave and Marilyn.