Basel, Switzerland (2023)

This is part 1/11 in a series I'll be writing about our 20-day journey from Switzerland to the The Netherlands via a Rhine River cruise with my parents and extended family. You can get a good overview of the series in the summary post, 20 Days on the Rhine River (2023)

Basel is the port city from which all Rhine River cruises disembark. D and I arrived about five days earlier than the rest of my family so that we could have a bit of couples' time before we would be sucked into the big fam bam of 30 people and the other 250 passengers on the cruise.

It was a long journey getting to Basel. Our flight out of SFO departed mid-afternoon and arrived in Frankfurt for our connection in the early morning. Our connection flight from Frankfurt to Basel wasn't until the early afternoon, and we didn't make it to our hotel until 4PM local time. We both opted to stay up on both flights so that we could knock out by 8PM in Basel. What we didn't anticipate was how confused our bodies would be by the 12-hour timezone change; even though we had been up for 36 hours by the time it was 8PM in Basel and were completely wiped, it was 8AM in San Francisco and our brains refused to let us go to sleep. I don't think I actually fell asleep until 11PM or close to midnight the first night in Switzerland.

Staying up for the whole flight works really well for us when we fly to Asia, which has a 16+ hour time difference, but 12 hours was a tougher adjustment. I think it took us until the third day or so before we no longer had jet lag.

Day 1: Basel Marktplatz and Rathaus

Since D and I were trying to counter the jet lag from the get go, we decided to avoid the temptation of sleep by doing some exploring right after we checked into the hotel. It was kind of drizzly and cold and we were both total zombies, so it took a lot of physical effort to force ourselves to walk around for a couple hours until we could finally eat dinner in the local time.

We actually stumbled upon the Basel Public Library (die Bibliothek in German), which was gorgeous! Seven stories or so of cozy reading nooks, coworking spaces, sunlit conference rooms, play areas for kids...etc. I wish our public libraries had the funding and support to be like this. The top level had beautiful, exposed wood beams that made it feel more like a cabin than an A-frame. The entrance to the library was tucked away in one of the little hidden courtyards, off the main streets, and shared the courtyard with a cute cafe, bakery, and brewery/restaurant.

From there we wandered into the Marktplatz (literally translates to "market place" in German) to check out the little farmers' market and the Basel Rathaus (Rathaus literally means "house of advice/council", so a Rathaus generally refers to a town hall).

Fun fact: in the local Basel German dialect "Roothus" means "council house" but also sounds like "red house", a pun referencing the red sandstone facade of the building!

The hotel we were staying at was actually in the perfect location for us to explore Old Town Basel and to get around by public transportation. Highly recommend staying at The Passage - Urban Retreat in Basel! It also had really nice cafe-style seating in the lobby with lemon water, and a nice courtyard with outdoor seating. The rooms were also relatively large compared to other hotel rooms I've stayed in on previous visits to Europe.

It was finally dinnertime, and D and I weren't keen on dining out in Switzerland because it is stupid expensive (starting on average around 20CHF/pp, even for just a crepe), so we decided to do some grocery shopping. I was THRILLED to discover an Asian grocery store called A-chau right across the train station. There was surprising number of small, Asian grocery stores scattered throughout Basel when we looked on Google too. The variety of sauces and goods at this market was actually incredible -- did not expect to see such thorough coverage of ingredients, from tteokbokki to frozen banana leaves to Sichuan mala hot pot soup bases.

While we ate our ramen dinner in our room and watched German TV, we discovered German cult favorite Bernd das Brot (Bernd the bread). He is a depressed and curmudgeonly loaf of pullman bread with giant, human-like hands attached to his body. We were watching some PBS-like channel where Bernd was stuck in a Russian spaceship (unclear, but lots of Cyrillic) and got ejected into space, where he sadly floated away in the darkness. I found it hysterical.

Day 2: Basel Altstadt

After two days of airplane food, dry snacks, and instant ramen, D and I felt like we could afford to do one meal with fresh food. We went to Bäckerei Kult, a bakery that has been established since 1726! It had a lot of good reviews on Google, and the line out the door at 7am was a good indicator.

It was exciting to finally use my German again after over a decade, and I insisted on responding to the cashier in German even though they spoke to me in English. I was a little embarrassed because my listening and speaking skill are super rusty; it's really hard for me to form a grammatically correct sentence on the spot. My writing and reading skills are still pretty good though!

The pastries were honestly a little underwhelming, even though they looked so good. Everything was surprisingly cold, like they had just come out of the fridge rather than freshly baked. The croissant was dry and the quiche was pretty flavorless. Pretty disappointing for a meal that cost 34 CHF ($38 USD)! D and I were also deeply disappointed by the cappuccino, which was very bitter and had way too much milk.

Both of us decided that we were better off just buying our own groceries.

D needed to do some work after breakfast, so he went back to the hotel and I did some solo exploring through town.

Throughout Basel, I saw multiple murals of an anthropomorphized rooster (or parrot...?). Sometimes he was drawn with companions, like a man in a bearded mask who had apple bushes for clothes, and a monkey. Sometimes he seemed to be antagonizing the local people in the murals. I literally could not find any information on these figures on Google, so if anyone knows what any of this is about, I would love to be enlightened.

D wrapped up work in the late afternoon and we both got to walk around the city more together.

Public transportation is really good and convenient in Basel, and a lot of the hotels and hostels actually give you public transit passes to use during your stay! It made it free and cheap for us to get around anywhere in Basel and the surrounding neighborhoods. Even without public transporation, it's still a very walkable city.

D and I decided to check out the University of Basel's botanical garden. The gardens are some of the oldest in the world and were established in 1589 by Caspar Bauhin. There were various greenhouses focused on different ecosystems, from rare succulents in South America, to cold, temperate rainforest flora.

There was also a very lovely bonsai garden with small, manmade creeks and waterfalls running through sections of the gardens. We even saw a giant sequoia! Took us by completely surprise since giant sequoias are native only to Central California -- pretty cool to see one thriving in Basel, Switzerland of all places.

While walking through the grounds, we also heard owls! Usually don't hear or see them unless it's dusk or early morning, but we saw one swoop into a tree. We followed it to the tree, trying to catch a glimpse, but no luck. It was really cool listening to the rhythmic hooting as the owl in the tree had a conversation with a different one elsewhere in the gardens.

D and I went to check out the Pharmacy Museum after our walk through the gardens. A lot of the museums in Basel offer a reduced price on entrance fees if you carry a tourist transit pass, but unfortunately the Pharmacy Museum didn't. The fee was a little pricy for how small the museum was at 8 CHF ($9 USD). It was still cool seeing all the weird and creepy creatures that humans have used over the millennia to create medicines and various drugs.

After a fascinating journey through medicinal and alchemic history at the Pharmacy Museum, D and I decided to take a stroll along the banks of the Rhine River.

D and I were watching this little boat ferry people across the river using a rope and/or electrical line and it looked really fun! It cost us about 5 CHF but it was worth it for the novelty of riding this cute little wooden boat.

After getting off the boat, we walked up the long flight of stairs to see the Basler Münster, which is a famous Gothic and Romanesque church that still hosts prayer and worship every weekend! It was originally built between 1019 and 1500, but was destroyed by the 1356 Basel earthquake. The original had five steeples, but was rebuilt with just the two you see today. The Basler Münster today is a Reformed Protestant Church. During the Protestant Reformation, many religious paintings and valuable pieces of art were destroyed between 1528 and 1529 because church reformers viewed the worship of God in the form of pictures as idolatry.

After our city exploration, we both decided to hit the local bouldering gym. One of our favorite things to do while traveling is checking out the local gyms; good opportunity to mingle with some locals and try out new problems!

The gym we went to was ELYS Boulderloft, which is located right on the border between Switzerland and France. It was one of the nicest gyms we've been to -- it had a cool cafe where you could buy beers, a lounge area full of couches and a giant projector, two floors of bouldering, and the coolest kids' playspace I've seen. I was honestly really jealous of all the kids in the gym. A third of the space was dedicated to indoor jungle gyms with cool rope tunnels connecting small bouldering walls and hammocks you could lie in. There was also a whole wall on the 2nd floor that only had partnered bouldering problems! It was my first time seeing that in a gym; I didn't even know you could partner up for bouldering.

The problems were so much fun. I feel like the route setting was pretty different from what we've done in American gyms, which tend to be focused on power and finger strength (like everything needs to be a crimp to be considered hard and you gotta cut feet and do pull ups to get to the next hold). The climbs at ELYS Boulderloft were a lot more technical and didn't only require powerful moves to send: I really liked the slabs and traverses where you had to get more creative about how you transferred your weight and used your hips. D and I also had a blast trying out their comp wall!

It felt really good to get some real exercise and some blood pumping before heading out to Interlaken the next day.

Miscellaneous Basel things like food and coffee

Loquats in Switzerland?!

D and I were struggling to find good-quality, fresh fruit in Basel that wasn't just apples and bananas. BUT I did come across a hole-in-the-wall grocery store -- that I don't remember the location of -- that sold loquats!! Of all fruits!! Loquats are one of my favorite fruits and I was absolutely ecstatic to see them in Switzerland, of all places. If you're not familiar with them, loquats are native to China and also have been grown in Japan for over a thousand years. I rarely see them sold in the U.S. and have only had them because we used to have a tree in my childhood home and our family friends would hand out bags of them each year. San Francisco actually has a ton of loquat trees, although most are just ornamental and don't fruit.

Good loquats are juicy, have small seats, and the sweet flesh has a texture similar to cherries but the flavor of a cross between apricots and pears, but with honey undertones. You can use loquat leaves to brew herbal tea too! Highly recommend trying out loquats if you ever see them; I eagerly anticipate the early summer each year for the chance to see some loquats in farmers' markets.

These random loquats I found in Basel were unfortunately not good. The peel was too thick and it was mostly seed instead of flesh. And they just tasted like lightly-sugared water. I had to shoot my shot though.

Nón Lá Vietnamese Kitchen

When D and I met up with our little cruise group, after they'd all landed in Basel, we took charge of finding a dinner spot. The best-rated one was Nón Lá Vietnamese Kitchen, which actually has multiple locations in Basel. Apparently, this is a really popular place that typically requires reservations and books out fast. However, we were able to go right at opening and managed to get three tables to fit our group after convincing the staff that we'd be done within the hour and before their reservations arrive.

The menu is super vegetarian-friendly and even offered a phó option with vegetable broth! Everything was really fresh, flavored well, and beautifully-presented. The biggest drawback is the pricing; it was pretty expensive for the portion sizes (on the small side).

Cafés

To be completely honest, D and I didn't find good coffee in any of the places we visited in Switzerland. There were a lot of aesthetic and cute cafés, but the coffee was never good. Most of the time, it was made with a coffee machine, and when it wasn't, it just wasn't done right. Am I being a snob about this? Yes.

One of the highly-rated places in Basel was La Columbiana Coffee Roasters near the Basel SBB (train station). The vibe is really nice -- there are only a few seats at a counter that wraps around the shop and a couple by the windows. There's tons of dispensers of different coffee beans and grounds with different names and profiles written on them. It's very quaint and cozy, especially on a dreary and cold day.

But wow, they did not know what they were doing. We ordered an espresso and a latte. The beans were definitely just burnt, the grind way too coarse, and the tamping of the grinds was egregious: completely uneven and not packed down at all. The espresso shot that was pulled from the machine gushed and spurted its way into a cup over a few seconds rather than 30-45 seconds. No crema. The ratio of steamed milk to espresso for the latte was completely wrong and the milk tasted burnt from being steamed too long and it was way too foamy. Don't go here for coffee.

D and I had a slightly better experience at Café Luna in Altstadt Basel. Very chic café with pretty, dark navy and gold, tufted-couches and chairs, and a pretty patio where you can people-watch shoppers and locals walking by. The pastries were decent, albeit cold (why are all the baked goods cold here??): a croissant, Apfelkuchen (apple cake), and some challah. The latte actually had microfoam this time, although the espresso in it was also not good -- really bitter and burnt. We didn't go for an espresso shot here because by this time we'd been in Switzerland for a week and had given up on getting any good espresso. We ordered a coffee drink instead, which was sweet and creamy and tasty.

Markthalle

When D and I first arrived in Basel, we had discovered the Markthalle (literally translates to "market hall"), which is a large food hall right by the Basel SBB. It seemed really cool and there was always a lot of stuff going on in the evenings, like music and dancing and community events. We made it a point to eat here for our last meal in Basel, since we weren't expecting good food on the river cruise.

There's a ton of diversity in the cuisine offered there: Italian, Mediterranean, African, Thai, Vietnamese...etc. The biggest issue was the line for each stand. We went at primetime, dinner rush hour and every stand was so backed up that some people had been waiting over half an hour just to place their order, and it took even longer to get theri food. D and I split up to each get our own things. I got in line for some vegetarian pad thai (one of the few veggie options, disappointingly, in such a large food hall) and D had pho.

If you'd like to follow the rest of our adventures in our 20-day trip through the Rhine River region of Europe, you can find the whole collection of posts in 20 days on the Rhine River (2023).