Trip to Basel

It's not often we get to German-speaking Switzerland. Maybe it's the travelling with 2 small children thing; maybe it's the nausea-inducing tilty train thing; maybe it's just the laziness and apathy when you can get stollen and sauerkraut in your local supermarket. All that aside, we managed to -for once- see a bit of Switzerland.

In short, Basel gets a thumbs up from the Switzerjudges.

The bronze medal goes to the lovely cafe, size of an aircraft hangar, looks like a 1950s railway waiting room - lots of space for Emma to gallop around in circles and creamy lattes in pleasingly large glasses with spoons for the froth.

The silver medal goes to the Art Gallery; Picasso, Degas, Paul Klee all nice to look at interspersed with odd, ugly mermaid fight scenes by local (old, dead) artist Bocklein.

But it's the Sprungli chocolate emporium at Basel station that takes gold; creamy, dreamy, nougat-y, heart-stoppingly expensive heaven. (Also a rather predictable winner from Ms Switzerlady.)

The wooden spoon goes to the old biddies on trams. Normally I love trams, but the hissing and tutting and clucking and sucking about the pram , the position of the pram, the children, was that coat warm enough? etc etc made me more resolute about walking everywhere (and I have some calories to burn after my rampage in the Sprungli shop.)