Saturday, October 4, 2008

Sick of us yet?

Oops. I think we were going to update 2 months ago. C'est la vie. So, Basel, right? I think we left off with the hot picture of me in front of the Rhine. If we can recall it right, we ended up at the Hauptbahnhof (central station) at around 12 (this is July 18th by the way), and decided we should take off to Basel, Switzerland, about an hour away. If we had enough money in our pockets for the train, we would go. The tickets came to 19.80 euro and we had 20, so off we went. Reesey sure wanted some lypsol on the train:




Being the responsible individuals we are, we ended up pulling out some Swiss francs from our Canadian car payment fund/account for some sloppy Joes, a.k.a. buns, meat and cheese, Swiss style. And no, the f***gen thing (car) still hasn't sold yet. Yes, friggen. It just so happened we landed in Basel for "All Basel Day" or some other civic holiday which poured every citizen into downtown. The train station was about a 5 km walk from downtown Basel, so we set out at a leisurely pace. A little while later, we made it to the Rhine, which is right beside the downtown part. It was pretty neat to stumble upon it. Jodi looks pretty pleasant, although I think I was preoccupied about how I would get our camera back if the fellow taking the picture decided to run:



(I think I was already hurting/whining about my new sandals. Their comfort was a definate treat). We crossed the bridge (which was really nice) and into downtown, and began the difficult search for nourishment in the 40°C heat. Along the way, we started to wonder why some streets were roped off and many people were crowding about. Jodi got a "butterbretzel" - her favorite German food - and I got a subpar sandwich, to be split three ways, of course. And one spicy water which contained only backwash after one pull by Reese. After the 'meal', we made a little bit of a wrong turn, indicated by the row of sex shops along the street, in a seedy area of the downtown. We quickly made our exit, and then began the search for a bathroom for Erika (we are seriously considering diapers for her again), and then finally found the theater and the Basel Münster:



The theater was pretty impressive (first picture), but the Münster itself wasn't too great. We are starting to realize that Freiburg's Münster is awesome. The best part of Basel was behind the Münster which overlooked the Rhine and a good portion of the city at a vantage point of about 80 feet. On the way back to the bridge, we walked along a really neat street with really old places. The one Jodi liked dated back to 1435:

Well, that about wraps up the Basel trip. We have a couple more things we want to post about before getting back to the present. In line with that: Tim/Les's visit, Füssen (Jodi's 30th birthday), Erika starting kindergarten, Reese our breakdancer, and a fun two weeks with Grandma Green. My parents are coming next week, which should be a lot of fun. Here we come Disneyland Paris!

Jodi and Jeff

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm glad to hear that we're going to make the blog...i'm so excited. Reese looks so grown up, seriously, he's grown since August. I'm totally working on making the november trip work, fingers crossed. I so hve to get to Basel..it looks great, and I have to go everywhere. I'll have to e-mail you some of our pictures from our trip, maybe you can add some of them. Anyway, better go Love you guys, Lesley