We needed to get up quite early this morning for our last breakfast and then to leave the ship.  The crew called us a taxi to take us from the dock into the town of Basel.

The disembarking process was quite disorganised.  Our bags needed to be left outside of our cabin and we all had to wait in the lounge until we were called for our transfer.

The taxi drove us into Basel and dropped us at our hotel for the night, The Hotel Krafft, Basel. By this point, G was starting to improve, whereas I was feeling much worse.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t check into our hotel upon arrival, which was fair enough as it was still very early.  They looked after our luggage, and we went off on a walking tour that I had devised with much help from the destination experts on Trip Advisor.

We started by walking along the Rhine with its stunning views of Basel Old Town on the other side of the river.  We caught a ferry (Rheinfahre) that crossed the river purely using the current, no motor whatsoever.  It was wonderful. 

Once on the other side we explored the cathedral, wandered the narrow streets, saw the Spalentor, which is a city gate, investigated the town square, called Marktplatz with its stunning Rathaus, before finally eating some lunch at an Italian restaurant called Cocrodillo.  We were able to sit outside, and we ate delicious, but incredibly rich and incredibly expensive, French cheeseburgers.

After lunch we strolled back to our hotel over the Mittlere Brucke, the iconic old bridge with lovely scenic views.

We were now able to check in and we had been given a very large clean room with a huge balcony with yet more stunning views across the Rhine to Basel Old Town. The afternoon was spent relaxing and reading in our room as I was feeling very unwell with my cold by this point.  When dinner time came, we had a longstanding reservation for a restaurant that specialised in Cordon Bleu.  Sadly, there was no way I was up to dining out and eating that much food, so we cancelled.  Luckily G was feeling a lot better, so he walked back into town and purchased some filled bread rolls for us and a bottle of wine.  We had a picnic in our room, which was lovely.  We spent more time looking at the view by night, before getting to sleep early ready for our flight to Vienna the next morning.