I was trying to think of anything I might have missed blogging about and had almost convinced myself that I was done when I realise that I never really shared about my time in Switzerland! I was only there for three days, but I had managed to go back to France to visit Strasbourg and explore the museums in Basel. Plus, I took some photos which I thought are pretty nice so I wanted to just share them all in a post and hopefully also give some helpful information!

Day 1: Strasbourg

I took an overnight bus from Nice and somehow arrived in Basel with enough energy that I was up for a trip to Strasbourg! Since I realised that I don’t have any data on my mobile phone in Switzerland, I was pretty happy to be able to go back to France.

The train ride from Basel to Strasbourg was only an hour or so and the Christmas market is less than 10 minutes from the station, so I found it to be really easy to get there! We arrived on the first day of the Christmas market, so it was pretty crowded.

Christmas Market

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I thought it was cute that they are calling themselves “Capitale de Noël” (Christmas Capital) and everything just looks so festive! The Christmas celebrations are spread across the city centre instead of being concentrated in one place, which I guess helps disperse the crowds. It also means you should be prepared to walk a lot if you want to visit all the Christmas locations!

Petite France

• 

• 

• 

For me, the most scenic part of Strasbourg is Petite France, with its distinctive buildings. It might be weird to have a “little France” in what is a French city, but Strasbourg is located at the border with Germany and used to be under German control as well.

Food Review: Le Gruber

• 

• 

• 

Dinner was a little bit more complicated than we expected. Although we made reservations before we arrived in Strasbourg, I forgot to check the location of the restaurant and only discovered that it was 2 or 3 km away from the city centre a few hours before our dinner! This ordinarily wouldn’t be an issue, but we had train tickets booked and we were worried that we wouldn’t make it if we kept to our original dinner schedule.

After calling around, we managed to find Le Gruber, which had two seats open. It was pretty tough to find a spot because almost all restaurants are fully booked!

For dinner, I had the “la traditionnelle bouchée a la reine”, which is basically some meat in a pastry with a lot of “Alsatien noodles” around it. For some reason, the sauce reminded me of Campbell’s mushroom soup, but otherwise it was pretty tasty. That said, my favourite dish was the black forest cake, which had a really nice fudgy layer and a great jammy layer.

Day 2 & 3: Basel

The next two days of my trip was spent in Basel! I wanted a more relaxed trip and I was super happy that I managed to achieve that – lots of museums and Christmas markets and not that much rushing around.

Food Review: Confiserie Schiesser

• 

• 

• 

• 

You won’t be surprised to hear that one of the things that I googled was “Basel Tea House” and this was one of the results! Although after I heard that it’s hot chocolate was good, that was the main thing I was looking for.

I wasn’t disappointed with the food – the waffles were deliciously light, the croissants were delicious with butter and jam and I loved how thick the hot chocolate was (without being overly sweet). And there’s a great view!

This shop was apparently opened in 1870 and while I don’t think the decor is from then, I really do like the feel of the place!

Basel Historical Museums

There are apparently quite a few museums in Basel, but due to happenstance, I visited the Basel Historical Museum Musikmuseum first and realised that if I bought the bundle ticket, I could visit all 3 historical museums! And since there’s a 50% discount with the Basel Card, I only paid CHF10 to visit these three museums

Basel Historical Museum Musikmuseum

• 

• 

• 

• 

As you can expect, this is all about music! If you can, try to borrow the iPad from them – it not only gives you the English explanation of the exhibits, it also gives you samples of the music that they mention!

Basel Historical Museum

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This seems like the main historical museum! It was located inside one of the Christmas markets but the museum itself wasn’t very crowded. I liked how the exhibits on the first floor, when you enter is about 50 objects that sum up the history of Basel – it’s a really nice introduction to the town!

Behind this exhibition is one on Church, and the basement level has more on the history of Basel as well as tapestries and cabinets of wonders! I really enjoyed just slowly exploring the whole place.

The staff are really friendly too – one of them came up to me while I was in the tapestry section to make sure I knew how to use the iPad properly.

Basel Historical Museum Elisabethenstrasse

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The last museum I visited was the Elisabethenstrasse, which I was told doesn’t belong to the city of Basel but is instead on loan from the family that visits it. It’s basically a museum on how people used to live and what their homes looked like, but for me, the attraction was how the rooms were decorated for Christmas!

Christmas Markets

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Speaking of Christmas, one thing I really enjoyed was visiting the Christmas Markets! You will need a health pass to visit and generally, if they need your health pass, they will want your passport to check your ID as well. Many stalls in the market sell Christmas decorations, but there’s always a mulled wine stall and I definitely brought home my share of Christmas cups! If you don’t want to bring the cup back, remember to return the cups to get the deposit (I think CHF3) back!

The Christmas markets are spread throughout town, like in Strasbourg, and the two I visited were the ones in front of the Historical Museum and the one next to Basel Munster.

Basel Munster

• 

• 

Since I was so close to a minster/munster, I wanted to visit this! There isn’t much to the Basel Munster though – there’s a courtyard and that’s about it. It’s a pretty cool building, but this should just be one stop in your tour of the city.

I did hear that you can pay to go up the tower, but I didn’t see a way to do it.

And that’s it! This took a lot longer to write than I expected, but I’m glad I managed to do it. The last few posts of the year will be the usual year in review posts (I managed to find the time to write them, yay!) so stay tuned for the best books and my favourite tea moments of 2021!