Today we took a day trip to Basel (bozzle), Switzerland, which is only a 50-minute train trip from Colmar. It borders Switzerland, France and Germany, and has about 175,000 inhabitants. It's the third largest city in Switzerland after Zurich and Geneva, and apparently has one of the highest standards of living in the world. The official language is German, but most people speak a Swiss German dialect. 

After arriving at the train station, we withdrew some Swiss Franc from an ATM. Because Basel is home to more museums per capita than any place in the world, we decided to hit the Spielzeug Welten Museum (toy and dollhouse museum) near the city center. It had 4 floors of teddy bears, old doors, toys and doll houses, from all over Europe. Pretty impressive!  Some of the doll houses were made in the early 1900s, and the detail was incredible. Mary and I both liked it, but admitted that being on some floors alone, coupled with the dark lighting, made some of the dolls kind of creepy looking. Nevertheless, we still enjoyed it, and we only ran into three other people there.  

We walked about the Marktplace and decided to cross the Rhein on a fahri, a wooden boat without an engine and is powered by the current of the Rhein. It was neat to see this. We also saw people swimming and floating in the Rhein, which I guess is very common in the summer. 

We grabbed some lunch (quiche), and had a nice waitress from Finland. Then, we decided to head to the Basel Zoo, which we weren't thinking would be much, but it was large, and had a lot to offer. It was well kept up, clean and it wasn't very crowded, despite being a beautiful day on a Sunday.  

We walked back to the train station to take the regional train back to Colmar. It was close to 6 pm, and even though we were tired, we decided to go to mass at St Martin's church, which was consecrated in 1365! The mass was in French, and although we couldn't understand much, you can always tell the parts of a Catholic mass, no matter where you are in the world. After mass, we had dinner at a more German-themed restaurant along the canal, which was very nice.  

We have lucked out with great weather (sun and clouds) and in the 70s and low 80s. I hope that continues. 

Thanks again, for reading.

Jamie and Mary