Exploring St. Gallen...

The next day we took the train east to St. Gallen, a town of 75,000. We stayed in a recently renovated military canteen built in 1900.

We visited the cathedral...

...and its amazing library, which is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built in 1767, it’s Switzerland’s oldest library containing almost 160,000 volumes. This photo is courtesy of Wikipedia as no photography was allowed, which was disappointing as it was the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen.

We took a funicular up the hill to a nice walking path across a park. We heard the cow bells long before we saw any cows.

Down below we could see some kind of festival. We eventually made our way down and discovered that it was the last day of a 10-day fair. While we debated about spending the money to enter for the final 1.5 hours, a couple gave us their tickets. Inside the giant halls was what seemed to be an endless supply of booths for beer and wine tastings. We were impressed with the places in the building to leave your empty glasses. We enjoyed some good hard ciders, then wandered through the animal halls just as they were closing up. We ended the evening with a picnic dinner near our hotel.