Fondue and Hot Wine

Wellll hello!

Not me writing another blog post 7 months after a trip! I thought the time had passed for this one, but then I was served with this absurd “Christmas in July” content everywhere today so I saw my moment and I took it. Plus its a great time to start planning a trip to some Christmas markets!

Let me take you Back To December (shout out Speak Now Taylor’s Version). While we’re talking about Taylor, maybe pop on “Christmas Tree Farm” to set the mood.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I am a December baby so winter and Christmas things are my VIBE. So naturally I recruited a fellow December baby and my mom and we headed off to Switzerland and France for some festive fun.

We flew into Basel, which is in Switzerland, but also very close to the borders of both France and Germany, so your guess is as good as mine which language to attempt to communicate in (luckily everyone spoke good English). The airport even has a choose your own adventure feature.

Obviously, being the Marriott queen that I am, we stayed at the Courtyard Basel which was outside the city center, but really easy to get in via train from Pratteln station to Basel SBB.

We very quickly started our search for hot cheese and hot wine and were not disappointed. Glüwein, fondue, and raclette are in no short supply in Swiss Christmas markets. Basel has quite a few markets and we tried to hit as many as we could and also wander the city a bit! The big markets we hit were are Münsterplatz and Barfüsserplatz.

Münsterplatz

Would recommend the Fondue dogs we found at Barfüsserplatz and having a glüwein or three under the “Jesus Tower” as we called it.

We wandered through Basel a bit then found our way back to Barfüsserplatz to hit the little fondue hut we had seen earlier in the day for more hot cheese and hot wine. 10/10 meal.

Next up: we figured it would be a crime to be so close to Strasbourg, France, Aka the Capital of Christmas, and not go. So we hopped on the train for Christmas market overload. Highly recommend this little trip. I will warn you, there seems to also be large cruise ships full of American tourists that visit these Christmas markets as well. Legend has it some of them are still wandering the streets yelling “ARLENE, YOU GOTTA COME SEE THIS!”

You cant really miss the markets in Strasbourg, they are everywhere. If you live on the same corners of the internet I do, you may have seen the building covered in teddybears, which you can find right near the market at Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg on Rue du Maroquin (its easiest to just put Le Gruber restaurant into Google Maps).

There’s also some very cute, very tiny, Christmas shops like The House of Hanssen & Gretel on Rue du Chaudron (where Arlene has still not been found, or come to see this).

Along with not going to Strasbourg, I also considered it a crime not to get all up in those Alps while in Switzerland. I had looked into going to Grindelwald and Trainline told me this was a reasonable price to take the train, but we decided we would just get tickets at the station as we had been doing. This was a mistake, it was not a very reasonable price, but we already put on many layers of clothing and committed to going into those snowy mountains. In my opinion, it was worth it.

It takes about 3-4 hours with a stop along the way to get up to Grindelwald, but it is a beauty. We seem to have gone on a day where a lot of restaurants and shops were closed, but we still managed to find fondue, throw snow in our own faces, and wander the cute little town.

The final stop on our Christmas market tour was spending my birthday at the markets in Bern. Bern was such a cutie, I was out there searching for job openings there after we left.

We hit a lot of markets all around the city there, the main ones were at Kleine Schanze, Kornhausplatz, and Bern Cathedral, but there was many others we stumbled passed too. Bern is where I discovered my love for melted cheese on tiny onions and pickles. Will be eating this combo for life now.

I had also seen a restaurant in Bern had fondue gondolas outside their restaurant, so naturally, after some wandering around the city we had to hit up Marzilibrücke for my hot cheese birthday lunch. Find someone that looks at you like I look at my fondue is all I’m saying.

With our bellies full of fondue, we headed back to Basel and did one more wander through the markets there for last minute souvenirs, then headed back to London the next day.

This was an epic Christmas market adventure, I highly recommend all these places for a nice little trip! I miss the fondue all the time, must go back.

And now I will leave you with the best advice we saw on the trip.

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Stay toxic, xoxo.

Auf Wiedersehen, au revoir, (and sometimes they say??) ciao.