A proper look at Thun

Another trip into Thun yesterday, to check out booking a ferry from Rome to Barcelona. When we got on the bus, I asked the driver if we could purchase a return ticket. No, we couldn’t, but did we have a Eurail Pass? !! Of course we did, and we got on [for] free. Strange, but good.
Had a much better look at Thun, especially the main street shops (!) and the Castle. Thun has two rivers/streams running through the middle of it, so that its main street is divided from the next section which is then divided from the part that the Castle is on. Bridges everywhere, of course, and what looks to our eyes to be a very cluttered set of buildings along the riverbank. I’m not sure that they’re actually a rivers/streams, having said that. The two arms of water seem to flow off the Lake itself. Where they go from there I don’t know, and why the Lake doesn’t empty out rapidly I don’t know either.
Anyway, we climbed to the Castle. Celia had got to about 107 steps when she lost count. And there were a lot more to go. Anyway, the Castle looms above the town so that by the time you’re standing in one of its top towers the buildings below are miniatures.
The Castle contains a museum, some of which seemed to be in a state of shuffling about, as there were displays with nothing in them, and others that didn’t seem relevant. Nevertheless, by the time we’d seen about four floors of museum, we were well acquainted with some of the wonderful craft work done by the Thun people: beautifully decorated plates, and fine miniature pottery to name but two. And then there was the very impressive sleigh, with a full-sized dog carved onto the front of it. Not your poodle-sized dog: this was a fiercesome large creature. It would have gone well in the production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The Castle itself is fairly well preserved. The wooden beams, great chunky things, that hold up the roof of the Knights’ Hall, date back to the original building. A lot of it has been renovated at different times, however, so it’s not easy to tell what was there from the beginning, but I guess the basic structure, with its wonderful four pinnacled towers, and its two round prison cells, is all original.
We were standing waiting for a couple of people to come up the stairs at one point (because most of the stairs inside are circular and not negotiable by people going up and down simultaneously) when we heard this distinct Australian accent. ‘Come on, you Australians!’ cries Celia, and next minute is in full conversation with an Australian woman who was pleased to hear an accent close to her own.
As you come back down to the town, the houses are all clustered together on the hillside, with winding lanes, and steps, and tiny gardens with fountains, and a general sense of beauty. The Swiss delight in decoration: there’s one house near where we’re staying that has its front covered with pots and pans. And another that has a model of the house itself parked outside. And another where there’s both a live parrot and a model one.