Touring Basel Switzerland
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When booking our Viking River Cruise, we decided that we would stay two extra days in Basel, Switzerland before boarding our cruise. Basel is a beautiful city. I love how the city is put together like more of a little village. All of the small shops and restaurants are gathered in the middle, allowing people to walk and enjoy the area with out having to worry about traffic.
The city is full of cobblestone roads and long winding pathways. You never know what kind of architecture or piece of history you are going to stumble across around every turn.
Basel is located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet. You get a great mix of European culture and you can be in another major country in just under an hour.
One thing I noticed about the people of Basel is that they are very active. People are biking, walking ,running etc around the city. They seem to spend a lot of time outdoors and who wouldn't want to in this beautiful city.
There are a ton beautiful parks and green spaces for recreation and Basel contains the country's highest concentration of museums.
If you love architecture, I recommend visiting Basel Munster. Basel Munster, is one of the main landmarks and tourist attractions in Basel.
Originally a Catholic cathedral and today a Reformed Protestant church, it was built between 1019 and 1500 in Romanesque and Gothic styles. It was once filled with beautiful gold decorations but was torn down during the reformations.
Also if you love history you should check out the Old Paper Mill museum. Basel is dedicated to paper making and the art of booking printing and writing in general. The museum began it's life as a paper mill more than 500 years ago.
While in Basel we decided to visit the Basel Zoo. I am an animal lover and I love visiting zoo's in other countries, to see what animals are native there as well as how the house them. It was Spring time so it was amazing to see all the baby animals playing. Below are some of our favorite pictures from the day.
Make sure you check out our Facebook page to see all of our other photos we took! I did want to mention that we stayed in Spalentor which I thought was the perfect location to stay to be close to everything we wanted to see. Most hotels will offer a free city transportation card so we used the tram to get around to sight see.
Travel Tips:
- Bring a credit card that has a chip in it.
- Basel uses Francs.
- Using public transportation is super easy and can also be used to get back and forth to the airport.
- Check the weather before coming as it changes often.
- From the Basel airport you take bus #50 to the main train station and then transfer to bus #30 to get to Spalentor. (please check to make sure this information is still current)
