We headed off to the small town of Murten, once again in the German part of Switzerland (the French call it Morat) for a walk around the ramparts and a stroll through the old town. On the way there we passed by a fun looking playground structure that would most likely not be allowed back home. It was built out of rope and wood and the kids could climb up on top and then be spun around like a merry-go-round by the kids on the bottom. It looked like tons of fun with lots of potential for kids flying off it, getting stuck in the ropes etc. Playgrounds are much more fun here and much more like they used to be when we were growing up!

In the 15^th century, Adrian von Bubenberg had the town walls strengthened against Charles the Bold from Burgundy. As ¾ of the townspeople were German-speaking, they took a vote and decided to tear down the French church to get more stone. The smaller church was rebuilt 6 years later for the French-speaking community.

We continued past the library which had a two signs in the window, "Bibliothek" and “Ludothek”. The “bibliothek” portion lends books, and the “ludothek” portion lends games and toys for parents to check out for their kids. We thought that was a great idea so that parents could save money and still be able to have a variety of games for their kids to play with.

We stopped off at the much larger German church which was built in 1710. The town is on the border between the cantons of Bern and Fribourg. For 400 years, the rule of the town was shared and every 5 years it would flip between the two cantons. However, Napoleon was not a fan of this and in 1800 he made it a part of Fribourg. In the ceiling you could see a stucco relief with the bear for Bern and the three castles for Fribourg. The pulpit was carved in 1460 from a single oak tree!

We climbed up to the ramparts for views over the rooftops. You are only allowed to use certain colours of paint in Murten so everything was very uniform looking, but quite pretty. The flowers spilling out of window boxes and painted shutters added to the cute town atmosphere. At the bottom of the ramparts was a neat old clock mechanism from 1816.

The main street had lots of bakeries and we stopped off at one to pick up a “Nidlechueche”, a specialty of the region, which is a sweet, doughy cream tart. It was a very dense cake that we enjoyed with several cups of tea over the next few days.