The Tuesday before Christmas, we headed over to Basel to visit the Weihnachtsmarkt and the Doll Museum located nearby on the advice of some friends. The kids weren't excited about the long drive ahead, so I told them we could bring along the dvd players. Suddenly, they were all smiles and raring to go! My friend had sent me a link to a map detailing where we should park in Basel, exactly where the Doll Museum was, and lots of other handy information. But for some reason, that morning, although I searched and Chris searched, we couldn't find it anywhere in my inbox. So, we did our best with Googlemaps and hoped that Suzy, our GPS, would do the rest.
We got there all right, and even found the parking garage she had recommended. After that it all started to go downhill. I was under the impression that the parking garage was just a couple blocks away from the Doll Museum and market. And that being as these were kind of touristy sorts of things, there would be signs pointing the way. Ha! Ha! Ha! What a silly goose I am. So we resorted to the next best thing, stopping people on the street and asking them. But apparently, people in Basel have never heard of these strange things for tourists, have no desire to visit them, and no clue where they might possibly be located. (A few even pretended to not understand my German. WHATEVER!) Finally, after about 4 failed attempts, we found a nice older lady who knew what we were talking about. But the directions she gave us, although seemingly direct and clear, turned out to be not so concise. We ended up near a type of Christmas Market, but it was only selling food and had a couple small rides. Somehow, it didn't jive with the advertising photos I had seen on their website. (Yeah, this thing is big enough to have its own website, but no advertising anywhere in the actual city it is located at. So bizarre.) But it did have a clean restroom, which is what some of us were in dire need of at this point.
After that, we sort of wandered around the square a bit, thinking surely we would find some small sign with an arrow pointing the way, but no, nothing. We asked a couple more people, who again pretended not to understand my German. Seriously, when did Basel become French speaking? And then in desperation, I went to my fail safe and called Chris. He looked up where we were and guided us street by street to the Doll Museum. From there, we could see the Weihnachtsmarkt and all was well. Thanks, Honey!
In hindsight, we should have eaten first and then gone into the Doll Museum. But I didn't realize how much stuff there was inside to look at, since from the outside it is so small and unimposing looking. So, I thought we would just look around for an hour, tops, and then head over to the market. Wrong! This place was fantastic. It is worth the hour drive to go back and only visit this place. It is 4 floors of packed fluffy adorableness. We only made it through the top 2 floors in two 1/2 hours, and that was even skipping some stuff. There were dolls, teddy bears, miniatures, tin toys, and all set out in the most fabulous displays. Some of them even moved! There would be a button on the wall, you pushed it, and suddenly lights started going on, music would be playing, and things were spinning around. There was an entire carnival scene that came to life, a giant teddy bear car race, and a few others.
The kids were running all around, slightly overwhelmed, and not sure what they should look at first. I would hear "Mom, come here, you HAVE to see this!" I would walk through the different columns and aisles trying to find the exact source of the excitement, only to hear from another distant spot, "No way! Mom, come here! There is something I REALLY want to show you!" I finally said they should stay where they were and I would come to them in an orderly fashion, as I had things I wanted to look at as well. :) There were so many cute, fun things, but I think my hands down favorite was the entire village shopping street they had set up, on two different levels, with stores of all kinds, and people coming in and out, and children playing, beautiful landscaping, and all in miniature. There was a cheese shop, a bakery, a shoe store, a toy store and more. Gorgeous! I could have stood all afternoon just looking at that one display.
Finally, our hungry tummies were screaming louder than our happy eyes, so we left the museum and went over to the market to eat and do a little shopping. Nick and I chose pizza topped with potato and leeks, and the rest of the kids had hot dogs. The pizza was so good, I ended up letting him have half of my slice as well. The difference between crust baked in a stone oven, and a regular one is so huge! If we ever get to build our own house, I am definitely including a wood heated pizza/bread oven.
I had told the kids that I would by them something from the market as their Advent surprise for the day. We wandered around trying to find something appropriate, admiring all the beautiful scarves, wooden plaques, beautifully shaped candles and other wares that were for sale. Finally, we found it, a little house full of Christmas ornaments.
We went in, and each child was able to choose one. Sarah and Sophie had brought their own money to spend, so Sophie ended up with two. Sarah couldn't find one she was willing to pay for herself! Then we wandered back through some more stands to get to the carousel. Alexandra and Noah had spotted it on our way in, and really wanted a ride. Madeleine wanted to exploremore of the stands, and Nick made this face,
when I asked him if he wanted to ride as well! haha Guess he is getting a little old for merry-go-rounds, I just don't want to admit it to myself, yet. The younger kids had a gre
at time, especially when I splurged and let them ride TWICE. They all changed cars after the first time around, and seemed to have just as much fun whether they were riding a chicken, or a jeep.
By then, it was getting kind of late, so we decided to head back to the car. We made it back to the first little market with just food stands we had seen. You know, the spot where I called Chris from because I was lost. I knew the car was just about 4 blocks away from this point.
An HOUR, yes, you read that right, an HOUR later, we finally arrived at the parking garage with sore feet, but not too much grumbling, the kids could tell I was too worried to bother me with much whining of their own. We knew what the parking garage was called, we saw it on a map, but the map didn't tell us where WE were in relation to the parking garage. Then we saw a traffic sign with the name of the parking garage on it and an arrow, so we followed that for a while, but then the road curved one way, and the sidewalk we were on curved the opposite way and we would be lost again. It was a terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad thing. Why didn't I just call Chris? Oh, I did, over and over and over. But my cell phone wasn't working right, I couldn't dial out, I could only text to his Blackberry. Which he had turned off. He finally saw my list of frantic messages as we were walking through the door of the garage. I am afraid in my frustration and exhaustion, I just snapped at him that I didn't need him NOW and hung up. Not a good thing at all. I still feel bad about it, two weeks later.
Anyway, when we realized we were horribly off course, seeing as how we had left the downtown area completely, we asked a lady to help us find the parking garage. We said the name, and she said, "Oh! You are very far away! " She pointed down a long street, and told us to walk all the way to the end, and then turn left. We wearily followed her instructions, passing a train station along the way. At this point, I seriously considered hopping a train back home and letting Chris come find the car on his own the next day. I was that sick of it and that discouraged. But we preserved, only to discover at the end of this long street, that there was no way to turn left. It ended in a large shopping mall, and tram station. Great!
But, ta-ta-ta-dum! A very nice English man on a bike, heard us asking someone how to find the parking garage, stopped and gave us perfect, clear, concise, and CORRECT directions that led us right to the garage in a matter of a few minutes. Bless him. We were never so happy to see a large pile of concrete in all our lives. We all piled in the car, dying of thirst, to happily discover a partially full bottle of water in the car, that we all shared. Strangely enough, no one complained about germs this time. :) We made it home without further incident, but I think we will wait on returning back to Basel and the Doll Museum until the trauma has had more time to wear off. I told the kids, well, at least we got to see parts of Basel most tourists never even venture into! Oh, and did I mention I didn't bother bringing the stroller because Alexandra never sits in it for short walks and we weren't going very far anyway? Which meant
she walked for almost that whole, long, horrible hour. Without a single whimper of complaint. What a perfect baby.