Today we visited Spiez on the south east side of the Thunersee. Jane checked the timetable & found that buses ran every 30 minutes so we walked into town & bought our tickets just a few minutes before the bus arrived at our stop. Although pubic transport is very pricey access to buses is quite open & most people board at the nearest door rather than pass the driver. We never saw anyone either pay or validate a ticket, so either the Swiss are incredibly honest or the system is incredibly stupid & only mugs like us, pay.

After a 20 minutes ride we grabbed a map & made for the Schloss, castle, sitting on a promontory down by the lake. Walking down we passed some beautifully built, old & new houses & hotels & several wealthy Chinese tourists.

At the castle we passed through the manicured grounds & down to the church below & heard an organ playing. In we went to find a Romanesque church from about 800 AD & enlarged later, with some of its medieval frescoes still visible & an organist playing some unusual tunes. It was totally sublime & we loved it.

Leaving the church, we went back to the castle & had coffee just outside. I spotted the organist & talked to him about his works. He was preparing to play at his son's wedding & told me that he is a pianist rather than an organist & that he was improvising as he played.

After coffee we set out to explore the museum in the castle & were totally blown away by the quality of the displays, which were even better than those seen in Thun yesterday. Descriptions were in German, French & English, the range of exhibits was huge but logical & there were places where one could try to understand how tough life was in the Middle Ages. The kitchen was the finest we had seen since Hampton Court although on a much smaller scale.

The castle had been altered many times & one brilliant room had some of the finest plaster work we have ever seen with bas reliefs around the walls. It also had a small panelled library & the timber doors were beautifully carved in multiple timbers. Finally we entered the original keep where we climbed up the most authentic looking, crudely made stairs through 3 storeys until we were just under the steeply pitched roof. On one floor there were 2 chainmail shirts which people could don but their weight was massive so we passed on that one. There was also a wooden horse which d*** mounted to joust with a 5m lance, again not recommended for the feint hearted.

We left the museum hugely impressed, walked back up to the main street & caught a bus back to Thun after a hard day's touring.