Basel
Ok, I have to get these up quickly because I’ve procrastinated and we’re headed out the door soon to go hike this weekend. I can’t have unposted photos hanging over me this weekend, so here we go!
We went to Basel last weekend to sightsee. It’s kind of in the northwest corner of Switzerland, right on the northern border where France and Germany meet. It’s about an hour train ride from Zürich, so it’s a nice weekend getaway type place. We stayed at the Steinenschanze Hotel, which tries to lean into its artsy reputation, thus the record player and selection of albums from Vivaldi to the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever. The room also had the first air conditioner we’ve seen since we got here in June - so I had to take a photo. Dinner for me Friday night was Rösti with vegetables (that I did not eat) and egg.
Cass had obsessed about the creperie that we saw on Friday night, so that’s what we had for breakfast. I had the cinnamon and sugar one and he had a chocolate concoction. They overdosed him on chocolate, so he ended up eating about half of mine. Poor Luke had no GF options, so he had french fries from McDonald’s. Then we walked through the Altstadt and crossed the bridge over the Rhine River.
After figuring out how to get there by bus, we went to the Dreiländerbrücke, which is the bridge over the Rhine that is right at the Swiss border between Germany and France. You actually take the bus across the border into Germany where they have a big shopping center and other stuff. It’s neat, but there were a lot of industrial plants right around the area (and throughout Basel, for that matter) that just did not contribute to the cool-ness of the location. There is a pedestrian bridge you walk across over into France, but it seemed like once you got into France they weren’t participating in this tourism thing. Everything looked newly built, but to look old, which isn’t a great combination in a place like Europe. We walked around enough to know that it wasn’t all that interesting, so we re-traced our steps back to the bus stop. The return bus stop was literally at the checkpoint for the Germany/Switzerland border, and there was a place there where people were waiting in a long line to do some sort of paperwork/documentation. We could not figure out what was going on there, and we were just hoping that we could get on the bus and get back into Switzerland without getting in trouble for having not stood in that line. LOL! Spoiler: we made it back in! We later learned that the Swiss people go into Germany on the weekends to shop for cheaper goods and that the checkpoint is where they also get their VAT refunded to them. Ah ha!
We took the bus back to near our hotel. A coworker of Cass’s had recommended that we go to a certain hotel bar and go visit the cellar. Apparently this hotel was built on a location that still has some of the oldest remnants of the city wall that was erected in 1070-ish. We got a bite to eat at the hotel bar and discovered that the hotel restaurant has 1 Michelin star! I wouldn’t even know what that means if I didn’t watch the Food Network some. My cheese sandwich was delicious though.
These are the photos of the basement of the hotel, which apparently shares the building with a theater. There is sort of a museum down there, but it’s also clear that they use the space for other stuff. It’s so very European to show off their remnants of a wall from 1070 but yeah, we also use the space for staff meetings and wine storage. The next to last pic is an opening that goes upward that the sign says is the largest continuous section of the wall that’s still intact. It’s hard to tell, but I tried my best to get a pic!
Then we walked around a bit by the river, back through the Altstadt. We came across that mural outside a restaurant with a rock-n-roll theme. And I was also fascinated by those wax candles made to look like deer. Cass is fascinated by the gigantic windows in the hotel that open up completely without a screen in sight (we were on the 6th floor).
Saturday night we got to meet a couple of Cass’s coworkers who live in Basel for dinner. They chose a really cool Markthalle place that has a bunch of beer and food places with lots of seating. It was a really neat place, and it was nice to meet some of Cass’s new people.
Ok, I think I got it all covered. I can go hike without that hanging over me!