Arriving in Switzerland

We awakened early and had a nice onboard breakfast with some very strong tea.  We were just flying over some of the small French islands in the Atlantic as we were waking.  There was less than two hours of flight remaining after breakfast. 

When we deplaned in Zurich, Switzerland we were pleased to be met at the baggage claim by our Viking limo driver, Rene.  He had a very nice Mercedes limo with facing leather seats and a lot of comforts.  The limo still had the new car smell.  We were hardly out of the airport and in Rene’s limo when Emily looked out of the window and saw a 60+ year old fat man watering the plants on his balcony . . . stark naked.  Welcome to Europe!

Rene made the 90 km drive from the Zurich airport to the Pullman Hotel in Basel, Switzerland in less than an hour.  When we got out of Rene’s limo, we were met by the Viking concierge, Jean Yves who had a bellman take our bags up to our first floor rooms.  We were happy to learn that we could get into our rooms although it was only a little after 9:30 am.  Our hotel is exceptionally nice and we were happy to have adjacent rooms.  We cleaned up a bit then walked a few blocks to a nearby biergarten, Holz Schopf for lunch.  We had pizza and salad for lunch and all enjoyed our meals.  A local beer on tap in Basel is Feldschlosschen which is a nice light lager without too much hops. 

We met up with Jean around 12:24 (Basel is 6 hours ahead of US Eastern Time so it was only 6:24 am back home) for a walk around some of the city.  Basel is best known for the two major employers, drug companies: Novartis and Hofmann La Roche.  Viking had secured a mass transit pass for each of us for the time of our visit so we hopped on the streetcar and rode to the Marktplatz and the old part of the city (Altstadt).  We visited the Munster cathedral that was constructed over 1000 years ago and has graves within of people who were born in the first millennium AD.  Many of the streets in the city are still hand laid cobblestone and some bridges’ foundations date to the era of Roman occupation. 

Jean is a native French speaking native of Switzerland who is not only very knowledgeable but is an outstanding communicator.  He shared many amusing stories of the area including the story than Bern was so named because wild bears were kept in an area surrounding the city.  Before we parted around 2:30 Jean gave us instructions for getting to Lucerne and how to buy the required transportation passes.  He made sure we could get around in the city including to the Bahnhof for our train to Lucerne.  After we left Jean we walked around the city a bit before feeling tired and ready to return to the room.  No one intended to take a nap although each of us did so since no one really slept well the night before on the aircraft.  Around 5 pm we started stirring and decided to go out for a walk and to find a place for dinner. We were not terribly hungry after our large lunch but we wanted something.  We walked around the Marktplatz then made our way to a small sidewalk café called Kaffi Sandwich.  We all had sandwiches and salads that were very good. We walked back to the room rather than using mass transit. 
One of the things that always strikes up as odd in Europe is that very little ice is used in drinks.  I guess it is an American thing but we noticed that soft drinks came with one or two ice cubes.  There was no ice maker in the hotel so I gave up and went to the front desk to ask for some ice and the bar gladly gave us a bucket of cubes but it was obvious that ice isn't usually requested.  From prior European trips we knew that drinking water was less common in restaurants than wine or beer.  Buying a glass of water is typically more expensive than either beer or wine. 

We were all fascinated by the variety of automobiles in Basel.  There were a lot of Citroen, Fiat, Audi, Mercedes and other European models. We cleaned up and made plans for a trip up to the Swiss Alps near Lucerne on Tuesday.