Tuesday is a half-day ride, an "easy" day, provided that proper recovery from Monday's ride has been achieved. All morning I looked around Berne with a guy from Norway. He had just begun his trip and was distressed because he didn't know what to do with a whole day in Berne. So he spent the morning walking with me along the walking tour which he had already seen. And then he was going to spend a bunch of time in Greece. Good luck! Berne is a very bizarre place. The two main streets have the sidewalks raised up from the street by several feet, with buildings overhead, so all the sidewalks are covered. From the street, it looks like you are poling down a canal, but from the sidewalks it is quite nice; completely unlike any other cities I'd ever seen.

The fine arts museum (KunstMuseum) was pretty good: a huge Paul Klee exhibit (ok), and a room full of Picasso's lesser works. Also had some neat modern art.

Berne, of course, had a pit full of bears, and a rose garden with a nice view of the city. I had a 30 km ride to Thun, so I left by 4, got there by 6, got re-routed by the info office to a place about 5 km north of Thun, so no opportunity to look around town. The ride down was pretty normal: I took the road that followed along the main road, but up in the hills. More work, but worth the effort. Only missed one turn this time, and no scenic routes.

So back to Thun. The hotel was interesting because the main dining-room was used by the locals. As the only non-local, I felt somewhat out of place. For breakfast they pointed me to the special hotel-guest dining room where I dined in solitary splendor (great bread & coffee) while the masses huddled over their food in a smoky pit.

In the morning I rode to Thun and viewed the fortress shown on the card. It had a nice museum of the local pottery, popular in the late 1800's, los of war gear, and records from when Napoleon taught or ran their military school. He was a Thuner (of sorts).