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 Restaurant Banneret |
Located in the oldest
quarter of Neuchâtel, the Restaurant Banneret is Italian dining
at its best. You can hardly go wrong with any item on the menu. Not
only is the food exceptional. The building, dating from 1609, is the
finest example of late Renaissance style architecture in the region,
and is a feast for the eyes.
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Just off
Place des Halles, Neuchâtel's market square, is the Café Floridita.
Small and unassuming this café happens to serve the
best cappuccino in town. When the weather is warm you might find a table
outside, where you can watch the townspeople walk by on their way to and
from work or shopping. If the café is full you can walk to the market
square about 20 paces away where you might find an outdoor table in the
sun in front of one of the other local cafés. The cappuccino won't
be nearly as good though.
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Floridita
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 Cafí
Floridita, Neuchâtel. Enlarge |
Perched on the mountain top called Chaumont,
and overlooking Lake Neuchâtel in the distance, is the
old La Restaurant Petit Hotel. Specialty of the house is their
tender and delicious cheval (horse) steak served sizzling on a hot
slate. If the idea of eating man's second best friend causes your
palate to recoil in horror, the fondue is also good.
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 Restaurant Petit Hotel
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Launched in 1912 the old side wheel paddle
steamer Neuchâtel is now the restaurant Au Bateau.
One of the last of its kind, this old ferry may soon be included on
the list of protected monuments and sites of Neuchâtel.
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 Restaurant
Au Bateau |
 Cafí Relais de la Vue-des-Alpes
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Relais de la Vue-des-Alpes
restaurant has what the name implies a view of the alps - when
the day is clear that is. Often the Alps are lost in a soft haze,
but even so the countryside around this Neuchâtel to La
Chaux-de-Fonds café mountain pass is beautiful. After having
breakfast, lunch or dinner at this restaurant (think of it more as
a café than a formal restaurant) you can walk one of the nearby
trails through forest or pasture land where you may pass through a
small herd of Swiss cows with the bells about their necks clanging.
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Forty paces down the cobblestone road from Neuchâtel's
castle, is Café
de la Collégiale. Besides the daily lunch the café
offers sandwiches, omelets, salads, and beverages of coffees, tea,
soft drinks, wine, beer and aperitifs.
The café is housed in an ancient building - all the buildings
in this area are ancient - but the interior is modern. Much may be
said about ripping out the interior of a building hundreds of years
old and modernizing it. There should be a law against it. However,
the modernizing of this interior was at least tastefully done, and
is pleasing to the eye. If you take a window seat you will also have
a view red-tiled roof tops of Neuchâtel and the clock tower,
one of Neuchâtel's last remaining defensive tower.
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Cafe Collégiale
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Outdoor Seating, Café de la Collégiale. Enlarge |
Boulangerie A.R. Knecht is on the
corner of Rue Coq d'Inde and Place des Halles in the center of the old town.
We lived on Coq d'Inde for some years. I could see the bakery if I leaned
out of my 4th story window and looked down the cobble stone street to my
right. In the morning after I had progressed from a state of sleep to semi-consciousness
I would pull on my clothes, stumble down several flights of stone stairs
and walk sixty seconds to this boulangerie. Though we later moved into an
apartment a little further away I still often make it to the boulangerie
in the mornings. There is something comforting in a daily routine.
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on Boulangerie A.R. Knecht
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 Boulangerie A.R. Knecht |
 Café
du Theatre
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Stepping into the Café du
Theatre is like walking into a restaurant on the Champs d'Elysées
in Paris. Probably built in the 1800s the interior
is a mixture of stone, wood and cast iron columns and capitals, the
latter painted a kelly green with corinthian capitals and other embellishments
painted gold. A comfortable atmosphere you can sit here over a cup
of coffee and talk with friends for hours, plan your next travel route
or read your favorite book.
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 Café
Auberg |
Just a short block from Place
des Halles, on Neuchâtel's oldest square is the Café
Auberg. The café is fairly new having replaced the Chateau
dry cleaners around 2001. (The Chateau dry cleaning moved about a
block away to Place des Halles.) The Café Auberg
serves a variety of teas and coffees, and a few items to eat for breakfast
and lunch. The café's interior is attractive, and staff is
friendly. Climbing the steps in the back of the Auberg takes you up
to the outdoor terrace, a nice place to sit and relax and sip your
coffee on warm sunny days and watch people passing in and out of the
square.
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Auberg
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I can't say that the Restaurant-Pizzeria
Touring Au Lac is the coziest, most intimate place to have breakfast,
lunch or dinner. It is not. The restaurant's main advantage is its
location beside Neuchâtel's port, and minutes away
from many of the town's museums, shopping, and historic town center.
And, it is open earlier and longer than most the restaurants in town,
and on most holidays. Half the walls of the restaurant are
large glass sliding doors giving you a good view off the little harbor,
the lake and the Alps on the horizon. The outdoor seating is a pleasant
place to sit with family and friends and sip a drink on a warm summer's
day.
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Information on Hotel Touring au Lac
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 Restaurant
Touring au Lac, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
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Restaurant
Pinte Pierre-à-Bo. Enlarge 