St-Ursanne. Bike Trip #1

We left on Friday, August 30th around 10:30. We arrived in St. Ursanne around 11:30. This will be the last time that I actually remember any times. I only remember this because we timed our ascent of Les Rangiers. In case anyone has forgotten: That's the hill that made me throw my bike on the ground and cry the first time. It took an hour to get up the other side, and no one cried. Yay!

St. Ursanne was really cool. Probably one of the coolest places I've been in Switzerland. It's a small medieval town, all the buildings are built right next to one another in rows, and also in a big ring around the outside. The buildings are all about 400 years old (at least) and fromm across the small river the town is built next to, you can see the old castle walls on the hill side.
I don't know much about the history of the town, but I do know that the St. Ursanne church is my new Favorite-Church-In-Europe. The inside was painted in bright colors and you can still see a lot of the original wall decorations--in some places you can see where they've been removing the plaster to re-expose some of the paintings.
We had lunch by the River Doubs and smelled some flowers.
We walked around town and looked at buildings.

Look Mom, we found a yard sale. I bought you a Thought Present. Do you like it?

After St. Ursanne, we peddaled in the direction that the sign told us to.
Towards La Chaux de Fonds, which was our destination for the day. We rode up a gruelling hill and when we go to the top we saw this sign. Then we realized that we'd gone in entirely the wrong direction. We had to get on a train and double back--because if I was required to climb back up the hill, ride down into St. Ursanne and then out of it again, I would have done more than just a bit of crying.
We didn't make it to La Chaux de Fonds that night, but we got close. We pulled off at a place called La Cibourg around 8:30, and if they hadn't let us stay we would have slept in the bushes I'm sure.
There was no more pedal left in me (Laura could have kept going I'm sure) but I would have expired right there in the saddle.
We were in the French speaking part of Switzerland, and it seems that less people speak english in this area than in the German speaking parts. The proprietress didn't speak any english or german but her husband spoke some german. I managed to ask "Do you have a free room" She said "No" I asked "Where can we sleep?" I meant "Do you know of any other hotels in the area" but I think he heard "If you don't find a place for us, we're sleeping in your planter outside with your creepy statues" so he said "Well, I have a dormitory" I said "That's great"
Check this place out: it's a group home that sleeps thirty and we got it all to ourselves. The beds were all lined up next to each other, just like the seven dwarfs. It was very dirty and it only cost us 10 francs each, what a deal.


We had some delicious Fondue at the resturant, Birthday Fondue, and slept like rocks in our Giant Bunkbeds.