Tuesday: We began our day with a hearty breakfast at the hotel – authentic Swiss muesli! (Of course…)
After we checked out we walked over to the Spalentor (the gate of Spalent) the “most magnificent” of Basel’s three remaining gates built as fortifications in 1400. As we walked through the gates, it was easy to imagine how impressive they would have been to people arriving to the city.
From there we strolled down the street, admiring the architecture and the contents of the many shops.
On a whim, we wandered down an alley, and found ourselves in front of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland.
There was a special exhibit: Frank Stella and the destroyed wooden synagogues. We took the opportunity to explore the history and culture area in the museum. One of the novel aspects of this museum is that it encourages people to contribute pictures of friends and relatives to add personalization to the collections – this made it so much more relatable than a dry list of names, places and dates. It was fascinating and very moving – I felt very lucky to have stumbled upon it.
After we left the museum we headed back through the gate on the way to the hotel to collect our luggage, but had time to make a brief detour into the University’s Botanical Garden.
The lack of rain here and high temperatures this summer have really taken a toll on the gardens.
On the other hand, it was easy to identify the drought tolerant plants, and of course, the succulents were obviously happy!
Before we knew it, we had to get a move on and retrieve our luggage from the hotel to meet up with our tour group.
Next stop, Strasbourg.
