I’m going to Basel for the Easter weekend. Just a short getaway with a few museum plans. Has anyone been? Any recommendations?
Can’t add anything very useful, but I went there for a day a couple of years ago and enjoyed it!
Had my son who wasn’t at all interested in going to a museum, so mostly just wandered around the old town looking at the buildings and then went for a boat trip down the rhine. That was fun because you kept crossing the border into france and germany. Bought some insanely expensive (but very tasty) chocolates too and I remember the bus/tram network was good.
Swing Kitchen (vegan burger place) was very nice
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Thank you! Yep, we’re going to walk to the Design Museum, which means a walk into Germany. Really looking forward to the Easter weekend and have been warned about how expensive it is!
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oh yes - eye wateringly expensive, in line with the rest of Switzerland…
Ah. What kinds of things are you interested in and I can give you some recommendations.
One thing to be aware of in advance is that a lot of things will just be closed for the Easter weekend.
It’s a fair old hoof out to Vitra but if you’re going to do it, try going up the Wiese a bit and through the Dreländergarten sculpture park thing.
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Museums, nice restaurants, good architecture and boat trips are all good!
Looks like the museums are all shut on Good Friday/Easter Monday, but oddly enough they say nothing about the Sunday! We will plan to do as much of that on Saturday as possible, but I will look to see if the Vitra is open on the Sunday before we make the trek.
Probably too late, but here’s some late recommendations.
Combine a museum and good architecture at the https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/ I love the new building, but one ticket gets you into both and it’s got a decent collection.
Just around the corner is the https://cartoonmuseum.ch/en which is a falsche Freund for English speakers as it focuses on comics and graphic novels. It’s pretty small so it really depends on the specific exhibitions running at any one time: they’ve had good Will Eisner and Chris Ware ones recently.
It’s definitely worth a walk out through Lange Erlen to visit Fondation Beyeler | Modern & Contemporary Art Again decent temporary exhibitions and an interesting permanent collection. You can jump on the tram back home after.
Basel does like to make a big fuss about Jean Tinguely and his museum World’s largest collection on kinetic works of Jean Tinguely | Museum Tinguely Basel is pretty good. Lots of stuff from him and Nikki St Phalle.
Worth a visit to the Munster and historical display in the crypt is very well done.
Food in Switzerland is mostly quite shit. Zurich and Geneva have a good selection of international cuisine but that doesn’t really filter down to Basel.
Stücki is the definite top dog. You might be able to get a reasonably priced 2 star lunch: Restaurant / Tanja Grandits
https://roterbaeren.ch/ and Alchemist are both decent “small plates” places. https://lauch-basel.ch/ is a vegan place which is meant to be good (never been but run by some cool people)
For a bite of hearty Swiss food https://braunermutz.ch/ is a pretty nice place in the town centre. Lovely old wood panelled interior and big beers and Bratwurst. https://www.walliserkanne-basel.ch/ is an overpriced touristical shithole which you’d be better off avoiding altogether and going here https://www.restaurantfischerstube.ch/ or fondue stube next door instead.
Other than that, Plattfon STORE is a great record shop and across the rod, https://angelsshare.bar/ is the best cocktail place in town.
They also put on some of the weirdest gigs around: https://klappfon.info/
If you’re going out drinking, avoid the glitzy neon shitpits of Steinenvorstadt and head to Klein Basel instead: around Rheingasse and Rebgasse. The anarchist collective Der Kalender - hirscheneck.ch has a mix of punk, metal and techno nights downstairs with a nice bar upstairs. https://www.renee.ch/ is always an interesting option and theres a good few other bars around there too.
If you’re interested let me know where you’re staying and i’ll see if I can think of anything close by.
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Hey! Thank you so much for this. We’ve filled out a pretty full itinerary for the weekend, although there’s a couple of gaps where I’ll be taking up your suggestions. We’ve already booked tickets for the Kunstmuseum, and dinner at Zum Braunen Mutz on our final night. I also see what you mean about average food at high prices, so we’ve gone to extremes with the bookings for the other two nights. Night one, a booking just across the border into Germany where the food improves and the price halves. Night two at Cheval Blanc which is just us going super high end and showing off.
We’ve also sorted a boat trip and an old city walking tour as it’s our first time, and our hotel is right next to the Historisches Museum which is free from 4-5pm so we’ll pop in for that.
That still leaves us a bit of time to visit the cocktail bar you recommend and one of the other museums. Cannot wait, and thank you again!
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Yeah, was going to say that a lot of people wanting to push the boat out will head into France. A ton of top quality restaurants at a significant discount. But then you need to drive and I was recommending places in Basel.
Very interested to hear what you make of Cheval Blanc. I’ve never been because I got so enraged by the weaselly wording about the dress code on their website!
I think I know where you’re staying. The Rio Bar (next door to Braunen Mutz) can be a good place to pop in and wet the throat.
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We’ll be at the Motel One, as I suspect you guessed!
I had to remind myself about the dress code thing. I see what you mean, although really their main thing is to lay off the sportswear, which to be honest would be a bit weird when you’re pushing the boat out. Slightly more annoying to me is the “phone off” thing. I’m not an Instagram influencer taking a thousand pictures, but if we’re having that much of a treat, of course we’ll want to take a photo or two of ourselves in there. Some high end places get sniffy about that - personally I much prefer to see couples looking a bit excited that they’re doing something out of the ordinary, rather than bored looking businessmen acting like it’s somehow normal. There’s a world of difference between that and making an exhibition of yourselves, which obviously we wouldn’t do.
The reason we booked it was again because we saw that Basel was expensive to eat in anyway so we thought we may as well do something good. And although it’s expensive, it’s still cheaper than most of the three star restaurants in Britain. Will let you know how it is.
Thanks for the Rio Bar suggestion too, we’ll go there before dinner on Sunday!
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They said that cross border checks occur but are rare and you should have your passport just in case.
Good job we did.
So I can recommend a trip across the border to Café Gupi. Not cheap cheap, but cheap compared to Basel and excellent food. I read on just the one site by accident that they carried out rare checks on the border so have your passport in case. Cue ten armed police boarding the tram and sending the one couple without documents walking back into Basel.
No check on the return journey, so it obviously is random.
Oh wow! I have honestly never heard of this. Occasional ticket checks, sure but not Papers Please. On the other hand, if somewhere is reachable by tram we’ll almost always just cycle there.
Glad to hear you didn’t get caught out.
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OK, so you wanted to know about Cheval Blanc…
Best food I’ve ever eaten. And while yes, it is an expensive rare treat, when you consider how much bad food can be in Basel it’s less than you might imagine. It’s a fair bit cheaper than the Fat Duck and about the same as I paid on the one other occasion I went to a place with three Michelin stars (The Waterside Inn) for a much better meal.
It was completely unstuffy (despite the high level of service) - in the bar there were people with T shirts and jeans on. And while it didn’t feel like a place to be taking a lot of pictures (which I was fine with), I sneaked pictures of the main dessert and post desserts because they were so flipping pretty.
Plus my one worry at places like these is that they might be ran by tyrants. The chef came out at the end, shook our hands and had a nice chat. Then when we got our coats at the end I could see them all in the kitchen in a huddle with him, laughing and all having a pint.
So yeah, you don’t do stuff like this every day (unless you’re stupidly rich and if you were, why would you make something like this normal?) and I’d recommend it if this is your thing. Some people have a football season ticket, I do this once in a blue moon.
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Off home today. In summary then. Basel is ace, Switzerland is expensive (but you can get a cheap meal by quickly crossing into France or Germany), and it transpires that the reason you can get cheap flights and hotels on the Easter weekend is that unlike most big European cities, pretty much everything closes for Easter. Don’t come for a shopping weekend at Easter (although who does that anyway?) But most of the museums stay open (go on Saturday to the ones that don’t), so you get the place pretty to yourself and all the transport still runs until late. 10/10 would repeat.
Off to Basel on Saturday for two days (well, one day I guess, as we’re arriving late at night from Paris), trying to prepare ourselves for the cost!
Then travelling by train to Lucerne (one day), Thun/Interlaken (two days), and then finally Geneva (two days).
Was hoping to find a gig to go to whilst in Switzerland, but no bands seem to be playing then / enough to rearrange any plans. Never been to Switzerland before though, so looking forward to it.
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It’s not too hard to keep the costs down in Basel because of the proximity to the border. If you’ve got time, you can even take a walk/tram to Germany or France and watch the prices drop even further!
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