My husband and I will be moving to Basel after the first of the year. We'll be in Basel on a pre-move visit at the end of October (18-24th) and will have most of the time to ourselves to see the sights, etc.

We generally like to just walk around and explore neighborhoods, but five days is a lot of neighborhood exploration. Does anyone have any ideas of what we could/should see while we're there? We know that we're moving, so this is more of a "getting to know our new city" trip

We will not have a car but have no fear of public transit. Thank you for any suggestions!


Edited for clarity

The highlights of the city are the museums and the old town.

Take a tram to the edge of St LOius on a Saturday orning and walk through to browse the frech food and vege market - buy fresh bread and cheese for a picnic lunch in the park opposite.

Take the train to Rheibfelden ( 20km upstream) and go to the thermal pool complex - includes saunas, ice and hot soak pools, theral jets f water, a salt pool etc - very cleansing, very relaxing. I like evenings best.

Take number 10 tram to Alesheim and walk up to the two castle ruins behind the village - wander in the forest. If you really enjoy walking, ealk on to catch the tram back from Muttenz of Pratteln.

Tram, then walk or bus to Mariastein. Great views.

Train to Freiburg, and to the Blackforest villages. See the worlds biggest cookoo clock and eat Black forest gateau.(day trip) Walk in the forest

Train to Shaffhaussen to see Europes biggest volume waterfall ( on the Rhine)

HIre biccled from the train station ( hey are good quality ones) and follow a bike route - any - there are hundreds of regional ones and 9 national ones. YOU can do one way by train without paying for the bike.

Also, Basel is one hour by train (approx) from Zurich, Luzerne and Bern. I especially recommend LUzerne, with its covered bridges. And take a ferry across the lake.

Monday and THursday evenings: join the Basel Dragons running club for a run. THey meet centrally under the Westeinbrukke at 1830hrs.

ANy day/evening: guided tour with a difference:
http://www.baselrunningtours.com/ ( great fun, and lots of interesting quirky info along the way)

Wednesday evenings: go dragonboating on the Rhine.

Arrange a drinke event on EF and you are sure to get to meet some of us.

If you have specific interests, let me know so I can make some alternative suggestions.

biff, those are all fantastic, and I thank you

I should point out that we've been to Switzerland before, visiting relatives in Zurich/Lenzburg and taking the train through Bern, Lausanne, Andermat, Lugano and Lucerne. We also stayed in Frieburg for a couple of days and I took the train to Titisee and bought a genuine cuckoo clock (my grandfather always had one, so I have soft spot for them).

I guess what I'm looking for is something a tad more local. Something within bike-riding distance, or a 30 minute tram/bus ride. The dragonboat stuff sounds interesting; that's more like what I'm looking for.

This is the way that I look at this trip: we'll live there for a long time, so any long-distance stuff can wait 'til we're settled in. I'd like to get to know the city (and surrounding villages) itself a little more so that when we do move, it'll be more like "ah yes! I know this place!" when we unpack.

My husband pretends not to be social, but I'll see about posting something up on EF for a get together

Our trip is this week

We'll be in Basel from the 18th - 25th, leaving early-ish that day. Most of my husband's days will be full of meetings, which leaves me to explore on my own (I love exploring). Is there a night that anyone wants to get together and say hi?

Obviously: walking by the river!!

Naturlich!

We've been keeping busy. Today we took a tram to Richen Dorf and walked up to the German border. Yesterday we walked near Allschwil, after taking a tram through Aesch and Ettingen. We've been doing a lot of walking and seeing, checking out the different neighborhoods.

The tram system here rocks!

We took the train to Dornach today and then the bus to Gempen, from there we walked 15 minutes to Schartenflüh and had a drink on the terrace. From there you get great views across to the Schwarzwald Germany and the Vosges France. Also on a really clear day you can see the snow covered peaks of the Swiss Alps in the other direction :-)

Then a walk down the the ruins of Dornach castle where we had a grill (numerous grill places, you may take your own wood or charcoal or just search the woods. You can also drive up with the car) Great views again. Near
by is the restraunt Schlosshof with a large terrace.

Then either walk down into Dornach or Arlesheim and take the S3 train or 10 tram back into Basel ( 10 tram from Arlesheim) All in all a good day out. It is also a great walk on a fine crisp winters day

Our city guide took us to Dornach Schloss on Monday for lunch, not realizing that it was closed on Mondays this time of year. It was an overcast day as well, but I can tell that the view would have been lovely.

We had a fantastic week and it looks like we'll be moving in this January.

Idea - you will receive a booklet with many vouchers you can use for gratis entries to many museums, site seeing tours, zoo, etc...I moved to Basel last year and got it - very useful!

Forgot to wrote - I still have some if you need

A bit after the fact... but I guess not everyone reads the whole thread before posting... or in this case, not even reading entirely OP's first post...

DantesDame, just keep this in mind the next time you come to Basel... Though you might want to wait until summer to try swimming into the Rhine!

I hope you enjoyed the city and welcome to Basel for when you're moving here.

what did you decide about your motorbikes? remember the info from the bmw tosser centre will be biased.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I noticed that antony25's post was a little late to the party, but the information is still valid for future reference

As for the bikes, we decided to make things a whole lot easier all around and just sell what we have here and buy something else when we arrive. This will cut down on shipping logistics, parking while we look for a place to live and registration / insurance questions can be put off for a while... And of course "tosser" will be biased, but what they had in stock looked good and priced right, so it's not a big deal to us.


In the interim, it'll be the first time in 23 years that I'll not have a motorcycle