After our failed attempts at getting Evie to sleep in the car over the past few weeks, we decided that we should just plan rest stops. It was less stressful for us to get her to sleep in the front pack and let Thea stretch her legs too!

We set off nice and early from Morillon with the intention of getting to Geneva for lunch and Evie’s second nap of the day – about one hour drive. We managed to navigate our way into the city and found a car parking spot near the centre of the old town.

We quickly came across a town square centered around a beautiful and very clean fountain. Of course coffee was our main order of business before Evie’s nap, and we’d also discovered that our sim cards didn’t have any included data in Switzerland (since it’s not part of the European Union.) We found a cafe with free wifi so we could load up the directions to our next AirBnB. We thought we needed to purchase a vignette for Switzerland too from a post shop so we located one within walking distance of the cafe.

Finally we found a proper latte (the first in 5 weeks on the road.) They also had a petit gourmand dessert on the menu which we’d read was worth trying. It is a coffee of your choice surrounded by miniature desserts – in this case a tiramasu, a creme brulee and a chocolate brownie, yum!

After fortifying myself with sugar I put Evie in her front-pack and headed out for some exploring while she napped. The waterfront of Geneva is quite something.

There are beautiful gardens, fountains and a promenade along the riverfront. There’s a huge water jet in the middle of the lake. Clearly spring had come to Switzerland as there were colourful pansies and flowers shining in the sun. Although it was only a brief stop in Geneva but I would like to return and explore some more!

Turned out we already had a Swiss Vignette and had been travelling without an Austrian one while we were there, thanks to a missed communication with our rental car company. It’s lucky that we hadn’t been caught as it would’ve been a 250 Euro fine!

The rest of our journey to Bern was relatively uneventful and very pretty.

Thankfully a kind staff member at a motorway side petrol station lent us his phone to tell our hosts that we’d be late.

After we arrived in Bern and were greeted by our lovely host, Thea and Evie were invited up to their apartment to play. They had such a lovely time with the host’s three kids! The children spoke 5 languages, Chinese, German, Italian and conversational French and English. Craig was pretty amazed as was I. Apparently in Switzerland it is normal to speak a minimum of 3 languages.

Our Bern apartment was nice and spacious and we were looking forward to exploring the city in the coming days.