Fünf Fotos-Basel Day 3

We enjoyed a laid-back day today. Jim C headed to the laundromat so that our clothes would be ready for our river cruise launch tomorrow. When he returned back to the hotel, he remarked, "It turns out that the first stop was a dry cleaners so I went to France to do the laundry instead. " 🇫🇷 It is a bit surreal to cross the border without it being a convoluted checkpoint.

Yesterday I remarked about us receiving a complimentary Basel Card that gives us free access on all public transportation. An additional perk of the card is discounts to a number of area attractions. We opted to take a trip to the Zoologischer Garten Basel (Basel Zoo) and when we arrived we learned that our admission price had a 50% discount with the card.

It was almost as fun to watch the families and school children at the zoo as the animal exhibits. It felt a bit unusual to be at the zoo without Olive as we frequently take her there. Overall, the zoo made for a nice stroll. One of the exhibits had nutria, a rodent that resembles a beaver. When I looked at the geographical map showing the distribution of this species in South America- they forgot Oregon. I knew that nutria are an invasive species in Western Oregon as they were released in the wild decades ago.

After the zoo, we went to the Markthalle, an open food market and seating area with an extensive cuisine representation. Jim opted for Pad Thai, and I had a Vietnamese noodle dish. I think we were both feeling a bit homesick for take-out back home.

As we were leaving, I noticed the proximity of booths representing countries typically in conflict, and it served as yet another reminder about building bridges across cultural and political divides.

Given our ample lunch, we opted to skip dinner and instead have a beer and people watch near a traffic circle. In contrast to traffic circles in Italy where it's a "me-first" mentality without attention to any other rules, Basel seems like a choreographed cooperation dance. It was fun to watch bikes, scooters, cars, busses and pedestrians looking out for each other. In particular any pedestrian approaching a crosswalk is given right-of-way without exception.

I'm getting ready to call it a night with a cool breeze beckoning me to sleep.

Gute Nacht, Freunde und Familie.Read more