Giraffe Spotting In Basel

I’ve just started a tour for the excellent Railway Touring Company, Autumn in Alsace. Yesterday we travelled from London to Colmar via Paris & Strasbourg. Our Eurostar locomotive was looking a bit weatherworn and fly spattered, but it did the job, and along with the excellent French TGV service we arrived on time.

Today we took a service train from Colmar to Basel. One of my clients said that he taking the train before, but it went past Basel zoo and that he’d seen a giraffe looking at him. Despite an extensive search of the area as we went past on the train, there were no visible giraffes. This was a bit of a disappointment as I have never before seen a Swiss giraffe. So, no photo then.

From the station at Basel, we took a tram in order to join up with our vintage ship for a cruise along the Rhine.

Our brave little vintage ship for the River cruise came with a charming crew and a white tablecloth lunch. The Sun was out and life was pretty good.

During the cruise, we passed this monument. eat marks the point where three countries meet on the river.The monument is on Swiss soil, The far side is Germany and the nearside is France.

We returned to Colmar, a very pretty town in Alsace. I’ll post more photos later this week. Tomorrow we have a private charter steam train. STEAM at last. It’s been a long time.