The thing I enjoyed most about my trip to Basel was the food shopping and gazing through the shop windows, there are fresh fruit stalls, shops dedicated to selling just huge pretzels, gelato stands and bakeries all dotted around the city.
Obviously no trip to Switzerland is worthwhile without investing in some good quality chocolate, I asked our tour guide the best place to go to which she told me without a doubt ‘Läderach’. The shop’s windows are filled with huge slabs of chocolate in all different flavours and combinations and inside there is a glass counter packed with individual chocolates and truffles. I’m not typically a huge lover of chocolate but the non-sickly and delicate taste of swiss chocolate gets me every time, words can’t describe the delicious scent of chocolate wafting through the air in that place. I went ahead and spent a small fortune on some broken up pieces of the slabs, in milk, white and cornflake filled versions.
I decided to go for the white, milk and cornflake varieties, I had already eaten most of the cornflake version by the time I had got home because it was unbelievably tasty.
The next stop on the shopping trip was Johann Wanner, a decadent Christmas tree decoration shop which supplies the baubles for The White House, unfortunately it was shut at the time but it was still enjoyable to gaze through the window at all of the twinkling decorations, despite the fact it felt a little strange seeing Christmas in May.
Still in the mood for shopping I ventured into the Swatch shop, and got rather persuaded by the novelty aspect of buying a swiss made watch in Swizterland itself so after lusting over lots of designs settled on what I thought looked the most typical of swiss design; it has a clear strap along with an amazing perspex clock face. If you are a regular reader of my blog then you may know by now that I’m almost obsessed with watches and love to buy them over any other kind of accessory.
In the train station on the way back we spotted a beautiful shop selling every kind of cake you can imagine in all sorts of bright colours. I couldn’t resist buying a huge box of mini macaroons after being given one to try, I picked rhubarb, chocolate, vanilla, hazelnut, lemon and even champagne flavour.
I was actually enticed into asking for double the quantity of champagne version after the swiss man next to me claimed how incredible they were, and I’m very glad to say that I was pleased I listened to his wise words. They are the most incredible tasting macaroons that I’ve ever tried and in my opinion are much tastier than even Laduree.
I hope that you all enjoyed my travel diary of Paris/Basel, a huge thank you to Alexandra from Magellan PR and Amanda from voyages-sncf.com for making it all happen! If you are thinking of heading to Basel then I can highly recommend doing the trip by train and having an afternoon in Paris as a halfway stop, it makes for a great adventure. The city’s website basel.com/en also has tons of information on where to eat, what to do and places to stay too.