Day 57 – new city day
July 23 (Wed) – to Basel
- We slept in until 10am, found breakfast at our hotel, and noticed the same staff from the night before. They must all work “clopen” shifts of dinner/bar and breakfast. The hotel doesn’t serve lunch. What a shitty schedule for them.
- On the way to the train station, we casually grabbed Cokes. I even took my time and looked for something else. At the train station, we also took our time. Then, we realized that an earlier train for our same route was about to leave, so we went to get on it. Had we just not lollygagged….
- We got to the platform and noticed another train in our spot. It was the same train, but an hour earlier, so we decided to jump on it.
- …we got separated by an aggressive train door. And no whistle! 🤬 I was on the train without a ticket (not really, I just didn’t know where it was in our email). He was in Zermatt with both tickets. He messaged me my QR code. It wasn’t a huge deal since there are trains every hour (or more), but it was annoying.
- I went to our transfer point (at Visp) and waited for him there. During the ride, I’d “warn” him of upcoming stuff I knew he’d want to make sure to see. I used to wonder why people rode the same routes over and over. Now I know. It’s because you just can’t see it all in one journey.
- He found one of the half-hour trains, so I didn’t have to wait long for him to get to Visp.
- But our next train was fairly full. And the Conductor asked for both tickets and passports, which was bizarre.
- It was an easy taxi ride to our hotel. The walk would have been short, but there were a lot of stairs.
- Once checked in, we took a very weird route to get to our hotel room: up some stairs, up an elevator whose first two buttons are C and E, across a bridge with stairs on each end, down an elevator, down some more stairs, up another set, and finally to our room. And, it was all carpeted, which is nice unless you need to roll your suitcase. It was a wonky way to join two buildings and make them into one.
- Across from the city’s town hall building, and on our side of the electric train tracks, we dined at Movenpick Brasserie, a Swiss restaurant. While we waited for our food, he noticed that the grocery stores were about to close and popped across-and-down the street for our morning Cokes. He even had to leave that store and go to the other one in nearly the same spot. He got back right as the server was delivering his food. I had some amazing German onion soup and salad with a fabulous creamy dressing that was white, but nothing like Ranch. He had a beef sandwich that was more steak than brisket with BBQ sauce. We also got gelato for dessert.
- It did not take us long to fall asleep.
Day 58 – Basel
July 24 (Thu) – Spalentor
- Wow were were tired. We slept until 11am.
- We walked to Coop to collect sandwich stuff and ate on a bench in a little courtyard. The birds expected us to be foolish. We are also both pretty sure we saw a couple breaking up.
- Our hotel had a map of several self-guided walking tours. We decided to follow the short/gray line, but veered off it and just made our own. It was a lot of fun to just explore the area.
- We stumbled across a fountain with a statue of what I called Chicken Dragon. It had a chicken head and chicken feet, but the whole body was scales and it had dragon wings. A woman asked me what I called it, so I told her. Then, she seemed to think that was its name, so I explained no-no-no, that’s just what I was calling it (and why). Turns out, she’s from here and knows the name, which I couldn’t remotely catch. We chatted for a bit with Jacqueline, her Australian friend who travels a lot and was staying with her. They were both relieved that we hate our country right now.
- Somehow, we found the bougie shopping area, again. But this one was only jewelry. Bougie fashion must be in a different area.
- We saw the Blue Lemon shop (who only had yellow lemons on their sign!) and the ‘Sosta’rene Green store, which was just lovely. It was kind of like a Williams Sonoma, but only that very back section and honestly, much nicer and cheaper.
- We saw crews setting up for something big (women’s soccer, as it turns out). I was talking about “that Basel festival” when he said, “oh, you mean Basel Tov!?” I might have scared a few people around us with my LOLs. Sunday the 27th was to be the EURO/UEFA women’s fútbol championships (Spain vs England). August 1st is the Swiss National Day. Basel Tov, indeed.
- We figured out the shortcut between the lobby and our room. I have no idea why the first Front Desk Attendant sent us the other way, it’s way more stairs.
- I used some of our evening to work down in the dining area near the lobby. The furniture there is ergonomically better than the chair/desk combo in our room.
- For dinner, we went for Vietnamese, where he had Banh Canh Xao and I had Pho, both with ‘Poulet’. Our food was very good.
- After dinner, we walked to an old city gate, Spalentor (photos), and took the longer, lazy way through the university campus back to our hotel.
Day 59 – Basel
July 25 (Fri) – music instrument museum
- After sleeping in until 11am again, we made sandwiches and had lunch under the pergola at our hotel during some light rain.
- We took advantage of the rain with an early siesta of planning, editing, etc.
- It was still raining just a tiny bit when we walked to the music instrument museum. The museum was an old prison and each cell held a type of the various instruments. You could push a button to hear them. It was really cool.
- We found really good gyros for lunch and then made a Cokes/grocery run.
- We took a different route back to our hotel and found the World’s Smallest Museum.
- I fought my asthma hard all day, but especially when we went out. I think it was from all the damn cigarette smoke. I’m just going to say it: all smokers are assholes / #ASAA. It’s 2025. If you still smoke cigarettes/cigars, then you are very, very stupid.
- We took an afternoon siesta of working/gaming until we got hungry again.
- After dinner, we went out to a bar and found Don’t Worry Be Happy. Locals
singingtrying to sing Take Me Home Country Road karaoke was pretty funny. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a dozen drunk Swiss-zers sing country Karaoke. - They couldn’t smoke in the bar, but they could smoke in the interior hallway right outside the door….and it was disgusting. It’s the only thing I didn’t like about Italy and it’s the thing I hate most about Switzerland (with the prices of things being a close second).
- Then, a very strange thing happened. The bouncer accused us of playing music. He was determined it was coming from us. He even thought my (small, light blue) purse was a speaker louder than the drunk karaoke. I showed him my phone and the towel I was using to dry my hands (because the restroom was out of paper towels). Suddenly, he was super embarrassed and realized that the speaker over our heads (of the karaoke) is what he heard. He was also drinking on the job, so that might have played a role in his ability to logic.
- We came back to the hotel smelling like we’d been at Halo Bar before the smoking ban. Except here, we don’t have a garage to hang our clothes in for airing out.
Day 60 – Basel
July 26 (Sat) – sick day
- For the third day in a row–and despite not being up super late–we slept in until 11am. The difference this time was that I did not feel well. I was pretty sure it was a bad sinus infection. He found me some phồ.
- After lunch, he left me resting while he walked around a bit, crossed the river, and took some photos. Later, he also fetched us dinner to eat in our room.
