The weather forecast called for yet another hot day, so we went out for an early walk before immersing ourselves in museums. We crossed the Rhine on the Mittlere Brücke and walked along the north side of the river.

There was another tactile model for the blind (and sighted), this one of Basel south of the Rhine, with the real thing behind it.

We saw another basilisk fountain – only 26 to go!

We crossed the Rhine again on Wettsteinbrücke which led us directly to the first museum we planned to visit, the Kunstmuseum Basel.

Our friends Brenda and Bob had already visited the museum and highly recommended the special exhibition Matisse, Derain, and Friends, which was in the “Neubau” (the new building). We’d entered in the old building (the “Hauptbau”), so we had to take the tunnel between the buildings.

The special exhibit was great – 9 rooms of mostly Fauvist paintings, taking up the entire second floor of the Neubau. There wasn’t a lot of commentary on the paintings (we chose not to get the audioguide), so they had to speak for themselves.

These two paintings were probably my favorites; I like the way they reference one another. There were actually four related paintings; maybe I’ll see the others some day.

I could fill today’s blog entry with photos of paintings (the public domain is a wonderful thing), but I’ll only add one more from this exhibition, André Derain’s “Boats in Colloure” from 1905.

If this show had been at the Legion of Honor or the deYoung in San Francisco, it would have been a madhouse; here, the rooms were blissfully uncrowded.

The rest of the Neubau contained art after 1950; we spent a while in a room titled “Monotony is Nice” dealing with “Minimal Art”. One of the objects in this photo is art; the other is furniture. Which is which?

One piece even invites visitors to step on it!

We enjoyed the exhibit and it left us smiling!

I wanted to explore the rest of the museum, so we braved the tunnel again and began working our way through the older part of the collection (starting with 15th Century works). We were running out of energy when we reached this still life and took it as a hint to do something else!

We had a pleasant lunch at the museum’s bistro and walked back to the hotel for a brief break (and to feed our phones), then we headed out again, this time to the Basel Papiermühle, devoted to the history of paper, printing, and books. The museum actually still makes paper and prints books and sells them; it’s also interactive, so Diane and I got to make actual sheets of paper from rag water.

They had exhibits about the production and use of all kinds of paper, including toilet paper (on the wall across from the toilets, of course!).

Did you know that Germans typically fold their TP to use it, in contrast to Americans who usually crumple it?

The next floor up was devoted to writing and its development, including samples of writing from the 8th-15th Century, as well as this Megillah.

The interactive activity here let you write with a quill pen – Diane wrote a birthday card. She said it was hard to avoid creating blobs of ink!

The next floor dealt with printing and type; they had a full composing and typesetting room, as well as some smaller artifacts.

We had the chance to print our own postcard messages using relief printing – they didn’t let us do the inking, of course!

The final floor of the museum was devoted to bookbinding; we didn’t have much time to spend there, so I don’t know if there was an interactive element.

Basel has far too many museums to see in the time we had – perhaps we’ll return!

Everyone says that European railways, especially the German and Swiss railways, are always precisely on time. Not today – there was track and signal work and our train from Frankfurt to Basel left Frankfurt nearly 30 minutes late, and it kept falling farther behind schedule at every stop. Deutsche Bahn finally declared victory and terminated the train one stop early at the “Basel Bad” station instead of “Basel SBB” so that they could start it on its next journey on time.

Fortunately, our hotel (Hotel Märthof) was between the two Basel stations, so instead of getting on the following train to Basel SBB, our travel agent put us into a taxi which drove us directly to the hotel.

The hotel is a definite step up from Flemings, our hotel in Frankfurt. The room is probably twice as big, which gives us a little room to breathe for the first time on the trip. The location is nice, right off Marketplatz; we have Basel Cards which include free use of the public transit system, but I don’t expect to use that feature. And the Internet is enormously faster than it was at Fleming’s (uploads are much faster than at home, too).

It was nearly 4pm when we were ready to leave the hotel, which didn’t give us enough time to visit museums. The desk clerk suggested we walk up to the Basel Münster, which gave us a goal, and off we went.

We soon found ourselves walking through the University of Basel campus; it was founded in 1460 and still uses some of the original buildings (renovated, of course). Along the way, we enjoyed some new public art (Gänseliesel by Samuel Buri), a pleasant view of the Rhine, one of Basel’s 28 basilisk fountains, and the Natural History Museum‘s Halloween preparations.

Basel Münster is huge (about 200 feet high) and imposing. It was officially finished in 1500 and is the third church on this site. The interior was surprisingly plain, with no altar and no Jesus on the Cross; I guess that has to do with its being a Calvinistic church, but I really don’t know.

There is a good bit of stained glass; this picture of Jesus and the angels in a Star of David caught my eye.

We left the Münster proper and wandered through the cloister and the grounds.

We walked through the shopping district, but there wasn’t much to distract us – I was even able to avoid going into the Apple Store!

The Marktplatz was at the end of the main shopping street; it had the Rathaus (City Hall) on one side and a McDonald’s on the other (at least it was in a nice building!).

It was too late to explore the Rathaus, but I did pick up a brochure for their self-guided tour and we might look at it tomorrow.

I have to mention the “Singerhaus”, which is just across the street from Marktplatz.

The Fischmarkt Fountain is across from our hotel; it’s hard to get a decent photo because of all the trams and buses passing by.

We made a short trip to the Coop grocery store to buy some Swiss chocolate bars and returned in time to meet our group for a fondue dinner at Restaurant Löwenzorn. The restaurant has only been in business since 1874, but the building dates back to the 13th Century!