When planning this trip, once Colmar became a "must go to" town, the question was, where do we fly back home from? At 5.5 hours drive, Paris was way too far. It had to be an airport with a direct flight to Washington Dulles. Munich is nearly a five hours drive. And, of course, the longer the drive, the more stops needed. Frankfurt is a mere 3.5 hours drive, so that was a possibility.
But Zurich is just a two hour drive. And then I saw that Basel, halfway in between, has acclaimed Christmas markets. I immediately booked two economy plus seats for Carol and Julia, and used points to book an economy plus seat for me.
We had lunch in Colmar and headed back to the car. The drive from Colmar to Basel was pretty stress free, until we had to cross the border and pay the Swiss road tax (vignette) which is approximately $45 USD. Actually, even that was stress-free, as the Swiss are particularly pleasant whilst separating you from your money. Pretty much the rest of the time the Swiss don't care about you, unless you are tracking dirt around.
(For a place that has so many mountains, trails, etc. it is surprisingly clean. If you make a mess, unlike Singapore the Swiss don't imprison you, they just glare. I know from experience as a college student in 1984 during my three days in country.)
My brother Rod, when I walked him through the itinerary before the trip, went silent for a moment after I mentioned Basel. (A moment is as long as Rod can be silent for -- between my storytelling older brother Rick and my gregarious younger brother Rod, it's no wonder I don't talk much!). Then he noted he spent some time in Basel for work and said, "it's not that interesting a city."
(Honestly, he's kind of right, although we were going partly for the Christmas markets and partly since it was a way station on the way to Zurich. In hindsight, I probably should have booked just one night in Basel, but we only really had one day there, as we got there mid afternoon.)
The challenge with the apartment I had rented in Basel is that it is located in the no pedestrian zone. Which means there was no easy way to get our bags to the apartment and find parking. The good news is, Waze took us to the closest spot for Julia and Carol to lug our bags to the apartment. I had pulled off the main road (I was blocking the tram) and checked the five parking lots our landlord for the two nights suggested. The first four were over one mile away. The last one she had listed, which I resignedly checked, was only 0.3 miles away.
In all, once I parked, it was only 0.6 miles from the apartment, albeit straight down hill, including several long flights of stairs. Dragging the luggage back up the steep hill would not be fun. The apartment turned out to be a good size. Being in the pedestrian zone is great, as most everything we wanted was only a short walk away, including the markets, most historical buildings, the place we were getting our return home COVID test, and plenty of bars and restaurants.
With the car, it was park it and forget it. Parked Monday afternoon and picked it up early Wednesday. After a brief rest in the apartment, we headed off to the Barfusserplatz market. Not as impressive as Strasbourg or Colmar, it was still a nice market to wander around.
For dinner I got a cheese dog roll -- a roll with a long whole from the top down into it. They poured melted cheese and sprinkled hot dog pieces on top. I felt like I was dining on a meal from a county fair in the country.
For the life of me, I'm surprised I didn't take any photos of the market at night.
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