Basel

 As I said in last night's post, today is Stage 13 of the Tour.  I mention it again because it is so easy here to get the days muddled with posts appearing late and stage numbers confusing me so I write to remind myself as much as you.  

I said last night that I once went to Basel for a holiday.  I was with P at the time.  We went by Eurostar from London, stayed overnight in Paris, and travelled onwards to Basel on a train from the Gard De L'Est.  Our hotel was a two minute walk from the station. It was all very convenient.  We travelled in July as was the regular time for my two weeks annual leave before the schools broke up in England.  I would leave the school holidays to the two men in my office who had children and I would always take my break in the first two weeks of that month. 

I had a German client at the time who thought it most bizarre to take a holiday in Basel.  (I know Basel is in Switzerland but it is on the borders of where Germany meets Switzerland and France and she spoke of the city from knowledge of going there).  She was in fact quite dismissive of it even being a holiday destination.  I assured her that we would find lots to do and, of course, we did.   I had always wanted to visit the city since school days where the different spelllings and pronunciations had fascinated me.  Of course the different spellings are because of its proximity to Germany and France.  

Apart from being on the Rhine, where we spent many hours just sitting and watching the river (a "wire" ferry point was particularly fascinating),  it also has trams and  I would organise out tram schedule  at the end of each day for the next day.  It is important to know how to get from A to B in my eyes if you have places you want to see and limited time and not just blindly standing at a tram stop wondering which tram to board and what direction they go in.  I like to be organised. 

There are also many restaurants if you want to eat out somewhere different each night.  For us we also like to eat in our hotel room and there was a food  market near the station, next to our hotel, where we could obtain a variety of foods, picnic style, for our evening feasts.  The hotel we were staying in was more of a bar/restaurant with rooms, the kind that you find in France, and we would also eat there some evenings.   Breakfast each morning was in the bar area and I don't remember much choice but it was adequate for what we were paying.    

Then Basel is also a cultural centre and there were several art galleries on my list to visit.  I remember there was one major exhibition of contemporary art on whilst we were visiting.   

And finally there is the main line station adjacent to which we were staying which enabled us to have days out  and we visited Zurich and Chur which included a long train ride through the Swiss countryside and mountains.   

In conclusion, Basel was the perfect place for a holiday for us.  The train ride was quite an adventure too with harvest going on as we passed through France and of much interest to me and P.  There was also an incident when the train stopped at Troyes when a family became separated when the train doors shut when only half the family had boarded.  Troyes station is a very long curved station so we were able to see this happening a long way further down the platform on the bend.  Fortunately, if anything can be fortunate in such an occurrence, one parent and one child had boarded and one parent and one child were left standing on the platform.  French trains do not wait and the stops are very quick.   The family had a pushchair and luggage.  They were Indian and she wore a sari. I could see her distraught on the platform as the train left without her.