Breakfast is included! Swiss hostels are very expensive, so its nice to get something for free. We filled ourselves up as much as we could and then headed out into the city to have a look around.
Starting from the hostel we walked up the hill, past the mysterious church that although closed in appearance always seemed to have organ music coming from it. Ghosts or a tape recorder, your guess is as good as ours.
Typical our first stop is covered in scaffolding! The Cathedral apparently has an interesting knight on horseback slaying a dragon statue. We could see the top half but as to the rest of him I wish I could tell. Mercifully you can still see enough of the building to have a look around. From the Cathedral we followed a walking tour, that Debbie had picked up from the hostel. Which led us through the medieval streets of Basel. Up and down quite a lot of steps and some steep hills. The city centre is very pretty, with an interesting mix of old and new. Ivy clad houses stand side by side with graffiti art covered walls.
Braving the Swiss prices we managed to get hold of the map books that would take us all the way to Budapest. We also managed to get some more fuel for the stove which was getting a bit in short supply.
The Welsh have arrived! Walking through the city, there seemed to be an over abundance of red clad people with welsh accents. We hadn't realised that Wales were playing Switzerland in the Euro qualifiers tonight in Basel. This would probably explain why our first choice hostels were all full when we were trying to book last week.
After spending quite a lot of the day walking round, we decided to ride one of the trams that travel round the city to get an overview of Basel. Thanks to the hostel we were given free passes to use the public transport during the length of our stay. The hostel wasn't on any of the tram routes though!
Having had a productive day we went back to the hostel to do some research on the route ahead. Checking the blog we saw a message from Debbie's old friend Jeff who as it turned out lived not far from Basel. A hasty phone call later and we arranged to meet that evening in an Irish pub. We ate a nice 4 course dinner in the hostel and then got ready to go out. Needless to say when we got to the pub it was heaving with Wales supporters. We managed to find Jeff and were later joined by his friend Howard and a little later Howard's wife Fiona.
As kick off neared, the pub cleared of the supporters and we had a great evening chatting and drinking too much beer. During the evening we got an offer to stay at Howard & Fiona's apartment tomorrow, which we duly accepted. Moving on will have to wait for another day. Which is just as well with the potential for a heavy hangover in the morning. By the way Wales lost so there was no singing in the valleys or hostel (thankfully) tonight.
It was a great evening, and was really good to catch up with Debs and listen to Matts very entertaining German impressions!!
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