Balmberg - Snow Shoe Sunday!

Snow.  Shoe.  Sunday.

It's been freezing cold for the past few weeks and snowed on/off again all last week.  The flakes were usually too small to do much of anything, but we awoke on Saturday morning with a few inches, hurray!  Unfortunately, it started to melt right away, then re-froze into black ice because the weather turned cold again.

Hoping to find better snow in the mountains, we headed to the Jura in the canton of Solothurn on Sunday for an afternoon of show-shoeing.  The drive west took less than an hour.  We parked at the Balmberg ski school, which was comprised of a few hills with T-bars, a "magic carpet" ride and tons of toddlers in helmets learning to ski!  It was actually right up Matt's alley since it was a total bunny slope (not much of an incline) and he still doesn't know how to ski, but we opted to snow-shoe as planned.  There were a ton of families sledding as well ("Schlitteln").  Surprisingly, it was quite crowded even though the weather and snow conditions were not great.  We even saw a guy on short skis being pulled by 2 Huskies; haven't seen that before!

We couldn't find the trail we read about, but ended up walking across one of the ski slops and proceeded pretty much uphill through the woods for about an hour - we seemed to be going up a "cat-track" (easy way down for alpine skiers).  It opened up nicely at the top but it was too foggy to see much of the surrounding mountains.  The weather perked up in the afternoon and the sun peeked through for a while, which was lovely.  On our way back down, the snow was even slushier and the trees were dripping wet.  We've been told it's still early in the season, so we're waiting on a good dump of the white stuff!  Perhaps next month after the safari....

Llamas!

Basel Paper Mill Museum & American Football

Paper.  Printing.  Pigskin.

Our Sunday excursion was a short walk across the Rhine to the Paper Mill Museum (Papiermühle).  It's in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Basel, medieval St. Alban.  

 

In the middle of the 12th Century the convent of the monastery of St. Alban constructed a canal to bring water to drive water wheels (at one time there were twelve mills in the St. Alban valley).  During the late Middle Ages ten of these mills were converted into paper mills causing the area to become the most important producer of paper in Switzerland during the 16th and 17th centuries.  Paper was produced here for 446 years, until 1924.  The museum is located in one of these old paper mills, providing the history of paper making, printing and book binding, and included many interactive activities as well (we used a printing press and typeset our names; Matt wanted to make paper too, but it was full of kiddies).  Clearly a fun place for all ages!

 

After our coffee and cake in the museum's restaurant (popular spot), we headed home and it was snowing really hard.  Very pretty -- unfortunately, it didn't last, but was a heavy 2-hour flurry.  The forecast this week is for snow, so keep your fingers crossed!

Now backtracking to our morning.....we started our Sunday with some good ol' American football.  We watched a re-run of the Broncos v. Ravens playoff game, and boy was it good!  The Ravens pulled through in OT, wow.  In Basel, we have several sports channels, most of which are random (snooker and darts??), but two are ESPN and sometimes show NFL games -- once in a while there's no commentary, which is kinda funny but mostly boring (you just hear the player's chatter and a lot of whistles from the referees).  They replay some of the games the next day as well.  It's great for these non-live (day after) games because they contain the commentary but cut out all commercials, which makes it go by so much faster.  The 49'ers game was replayed next, and we watched the first-half before we headed to the Museum.

Now we're watching the Seahawks LIVE!  The game started at 10 AM in Seattle, which makes it 7PM in Basel.  Ok, the first half just ended and it's not looking good.  Sigh, we're getting hammered by Atlanta!  

London

Happy.  New.  Year.

Our trip to London wrapped up our holiday travels for 2012.  I’ll admit, it was a bit windy and drizzly at times, but it was actually not too cold (didn’t ever need to wear a hat!) 

  

The city was in full post-Christmas mode, still flaunting the vibrant lighting displays on all the main streets and offering a ton of sales. 

Friday was devoted to shopping and gastropubs.  We hit the beautiful Selfridge’s first, the second largest store in the UK after Harrods.  We made our way down crowded Oxford Street to the charming Liberty store and stopped in some of our favorite US shops along the way, like Banana Republic and Anthropologie! 

 

Unfortunately, our day of shopping proved fairly uneventful, and we didn’t buy anything (nothing was calling our names, I guess).  For lunch, we hit a small gastropub in the Marylebone neighborhood and I had the biggest piece of fish I’ve ever seen for my traditional fish n’ chips.  We were then in food comas and needed naps before heading out again in the evening!  Our lunch was so big we wanted a light dinner.  Polpo (Italian tapas) in Soho was just the ticket.  They don’t take reservations and we waited for half an hour, but it was cozy with a great atmosphere.  It had exposed brick walls and a baroque tin ceiling, which gave it a kinda NYC vibe.

The piazza at Covent Garden was definitely touristy on Saturday, but decorated beautifully and there were some lively street performers as well.  There’s good shopping here and we spent several hours hitting every outdoor store for items we need for our upcoming safari.  Wouldn’t you know it, we found everything at The North Face, although we tried several local stores as well, I swear!  

 

We happened to walk by the Palace of Justice on our way to lunch, which was really beautiful and huge (looked more like a cathedral or something).  I wonder if this is the courthouse I see on Law & Order UK?  

We also walked through the meat packing district to a very old old gastropub (Fox & Anchor) where Matt sampled some hearty Fox’s pie and I had the sourest ale I’ve ever tasted (not so good).

 

Next we saw Big Ben and the London Eye gloriously lit up, and had some freshly caramelized cashews from a street vendor on the bridge – warm and yummy!  We then cured our Asian food cravings with Thai for dinner.  So good!

 

Sunday was a day of walking and we didn’t return to the hotel until after dinner, around10:00 PM!  We started in colorful Notting Hill, enjoying the cool antiques on Portobello Road.  There were some really old skis and snow-shoes that were amazing – they'd be perfect for the cabin!   

 

We back-tracked to Kensington Park, which was surprisingly crowded with runners, dog-walkers and tourists. It was a typically gray London day!  No rain though.

We wandered King's Road in Chelsea (found the one Lululemon in the city, and another Anthropologie) on our way to Knightsbridge.  Randomly, we passed the church where Charles Dickens was married in 1836, interesting!   

We saw so many gorgeous homes in these neighborhoods and we lost count of the Bentleys and Aston Martins.  Ok, not cheap!  We finally made it to Harrods and it was as crowded as ever.  We lasted about 15 minutes, after I checked out the shoe department, of course.  After Harrods we hit the always popular and always packed noodle bar, Wagamama.  Yes, we miss good Asian food over here so we made sure to get our fix while in London!  Yum.

 

Our Wallpaper guide book listed the Dover Street Market as an architectural shopping interest.  It’s more like a 5-story eclectic art installation selling high end merchandise than a store.  It was very unique though, with a revamped red port-o-let turned changing room on one floor (but not terribly practical as most of the merchandise looked like it came straight from the runway with very little “ready to wear”).   Oh, and the average price tag was a few thousand pounds!

 

By this time it was getting dark so we continued up to the Connaught, one of the old luxury hotels (1897) for an [overpriced] glass of wine for me and a sidecar for Matt.  It was dark, opulent and a real treat with bow-tie clad waiters in waistcoats serving drinks.  And it would've been even better if they lit one of the two fireplaces!  Fancy, schmancy.

From here we went to Sketch, a quirky multi-roomed restaurant that also houses several different bars and the most interesting loos, shaped like big eggs (we went on a previous trip and really liked it, the bar I mean.  Well, the loos were pretty nifty too).  We had a drink in the Glade bar, which is decorated like an enchanted fairy-tale.  Last time we visited the eclectic Parlour Room, so it was fun to see something new (although we enjoyed the former a bit more than the latter).

Now it was time for dinner so we hopped on the tube and headed back to Shoreditch for some pizza at the recently opened Pizza East.  Good lord, it was huge but crowded for 8PM on a Sunday night!  We had to wait 40 minutes, but it was worth it – super delicious and fun indeed.  The restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the landmark Tea Building and has an industrial feel, with exposed concrete and piping.  Whew, what a long but wonderful day!

                         

Monday was culture day.  We checked out the mummies at the British Museum and paintings at the National Gallery in Trafalgar square (both free, woo hoo!).  It was a windy day and started raining in the afternoon, but thankfully we were headed back to Basel.   

 

We passed by 10 Downing Street and Westminster Abbey before saying good-bye.  We truly enjoyed our visit!   

  

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  We returned from London to Basel around 9:30 PM on New Year’s Eve (flew from Heathrow to Zurich and took the train).  There were a bunch of kids pre-funking on the train headed to Basel; clearly they were in party-mode!  We, ourselves had a very low-key New Year’s Eve.  Matt played on the computer and I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary.  We went to bed around 1 AM.  There were a few German programs counting down to midnight with fireworks displays, but it just wasn’t the same as the ball dropping in Times Square!  There were fireworks here in Basel as well, but we didn’t venture out as we were too pooped from our trip!