Saturday, May 09, 2009

Weekend in Basel


The month of May here is France is basically one long weekend with a couple of work days thrown in. Last Friday was European Labour Day, so we took advantage of that to go to Basel to visit Alex. A couple of hours on the TGV is all it takes to leave a dreary, grey Paris and arrive in sunny Basel (we spent most of the trip sitting across from a very cranky woman who COULD NOT BELIEVE that the train was running late. She complained to the conductor that the train was not going fast enough, and then spent the whole trip huffing to herself. Lucky for us she got off at Strasbourg)

We spent Friday afternoon wandering around Basel, then we had a BBQ at Alex's and got to meet all of her friends. It was a lot of fun, and I sadly took a total of zero photos that night. Erik in particular had a blast, and as a result was feeling a little under the weather the next day for the outdoor activities we had planned.

Alex took us to a little town just outside of Basel to do a hike up a mountain, following a waterfall.

It was fun, although I apparently walked too fast.


We were treated to some spectacular views from the top, and Erik enjoyed the rest the hangover Whopper that he had bought before leaving.



The best part was that once at the top, you could rent scooters to zip down the mountain all the way to the bottom. Scary, but worth it. When else will I get the chance to scoot down a mountain?

We spent the rest of the day lounging around warming up (it rained all the way down the mountain) and had dinner Saturday night with one of Alex's friends. And that was that. Sunday morning we caught the train back to Paris, and sadly said goodbye to Alex, making her promise to come and visit us soon.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great pix - I love the Swiss "mountain bikes"!
Hoj.

Nancy Martin said...

Not so sure I'd want to 'scoot' down a mountain on one of those 'mountain' bikes!!

Torie and Erik said...

About those bikes...perhaps you noticed the lack of seats??

And we all had sore hands by the bottom from squeezing the brakes so hard. We basically braked for 20 minutes. Still fun...