Tour 5 - Best of Swizterland

Sunday we ventured out into the cold, wet day for a short driving tour. We visited Baden, Brugg and Aarau. Baden is know for its hot springs (bad is the German word for bath), but this small town is also home to the international conglomerate ABB and where the inventor of LSD (Albert Hofmann) is from. It was a nice town and we were able to take in the highlights in about 20 minutes. Brugg is another small town just a few minutes away where they found a Roman settlement very near by in Vindonissa. They believe that the tower that stands near the bridge into the city was constructed in the 12th century, but extended with stones from the Roman village in the 16th century. Finally, we visited Aarau which once was the capitol of Switzerland for a few months in 1798. It has a terrific little downtown with lots of painted gables and a great clock tower. See our pictures here - Baden, Brugg, Aarau.

Besancon France

Besancon is 1.5 hours from Basel and home of Victor Hugo and the inventors of cinematography (Auguste and Louis Lumière). Julius Caesar wrote about it in his journals so it's been around for a couple of years. The town has a terrific Roman arch and a theater ruin. Now the city's claim to fame is the citadel designed by Vauban in the 1600's. We took an interesting audio tour and really enjoyed the modern zoo, noctarium, aquarium and insertarium within the fortification walls. Afterwards, we took in the city's main street and almost experienced the incredible astronomical clock (poor timing didn't allow us to visit, unfortunately). We had a great time enjoying the Doubs River and exploring the town - see our pictures here.

Barcelona Spain

We took a 4 day weekend to visit Barcelona. We have both been there before, but not together. Robert wanted to see a MotoGP SuperBike Race, and Nancy wanted to visit the interiors of some Gaudi buildings.

Superbike recap: They ran three races: 125cc, 250cc and 800cc bikes. The first two races were 23 laps and the last one was 25 laps - starting at 11am and finishing by 3pm. Each were very exciting and had the fans on their feet (everyone cheers for the Italian Valentino Rossi...aka The Doctor for the 800cc race). The fans were most like Indy Car fans (as opposed to Nascar or Formula 1) and lots of the fans came to the track on their own bike. We sat in Section C and each drank a beer that cost 9 Euro ($14)! See race pictures here.

City recap: We started out on a modernist walking tour that took us to visit various buildings from Barcelona's most famous modernist architects: Antoni Gaudi (Park Guell, Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló among others- all are fantastic), Lluís Domènech i Montaner (Palau de la Música Catalana and the incredible Hospital de Sant Pau), and Josep Puig i Cadafalch (Casa Martí is where Picasso held his very first exhibit). We took another walking tour of the Roman and Gothic periods and were even able to see where Christopher Columbus went to report back about his discovery of America! Catalonia has a rich history and the city is a great mix of people, shopping, restaurants and history (the Mediterranean, the Olympics, the Rambla, etc.) - if you get the opportunity to spend a week or more you would have plenty to keep you busy. See pictures from Barcelona here. Race pictures here.

Bike Ride

Time for the first bike ride of 2008! Only about 3 hours in total, it was just enough to get warmed up for the year. The area around Basel is very nice for biking... Rolling hills, wide open country side, and plenty of small towns to roll through. Hopefully, we'll find more time for biking this summer. See pictures from all our rides here.