Kiddie cars

I took the littles up to Gurten today.  It is the local mountain for Bern and has lots of things for little kids at the top.  And we took a funicular up and down, which I thought would interest T, but instead fascinated L.  She sat right at the bottom end and loved it.

T enjoys a ride

At the top there is a mini train, a little climbing area over the mini tracks, a larger play area with a slide, a little water play place with some playground bouncers and a raft, and electric kiddie cars.  For some reason, although the place seems intended for pre-schoolers to maybe age seven it was overrun with older kids.  About a dozen teenagers had commandeered the structure with the slide.  I had to take T and L away because it was dangerous.  And T had to wait forever for a free kiddie car.  Big kids were swarming them, crashing them, pushing them when their franc ran out and the car didn't run on its own.    It was very stressful watching for a car to come available and seeing some huge kid run to it when T had obviously been waiting longer.  I could live with it.  I know those kids were having fun, too. But I did want to kick the big teenager with a moustache who pushed by T so he could crouch into a car and slam into everyone.  I felt like yelling, "You're old enough to drive a real car, Fool!"

Does it look like there is a fountain behind the top of the slide? 

I was surprised when L slid down soaking wet.

Okay, so the car thing was really stressful, because I am still having to vent.  But eventually T did get his turn and the crowd magically thinned out at the same time so no one crashed into him either.  He just took his little Sunday drive while I plied L with lollipops because she was too small to go.  They climbed the play structures.  They rode the little slide and the mini train. T snuck off into the water. L went in the water, too.  She liked to ride the raft and didn't mind falling off a couple of times. Then they both took a nap in the stroller while I went for a hike.  I wasn't successful.  Although there were signs and I had a map I missed the turn for the circle round around the summit and ended up having to walk back way uphill from the place where I realized something was wrong: the entrance to a beef farm. We recovered with drinks (Rivella!) and cookies on the restaurant terrace looking down on Bern.

the restaurant

Actually, I am glad I got lost because I saw something very interesting.  It was a hazy day and the hills in the near distance sort of just blurred into the haze like the horizon does on a hazy day.  But I could see farther than the hazy horizon.  Above it and farther out, looking almost like sharp clouds I could see the snow on the mountains.  So there were the nearish hills at the bottom, a strip of hazy sky above that like you would usually get, but instead of staying hazy all the way up it cleared and I could just barely make out the mountains.  They were so far and faint they looked like a mirage. I felt like a caveman, wondering if I could believe what I was seeing, and trying to figure their distance and size.