The Ugliest Hilton in the World

... lies in Basel, Switzerland.

Getting to Basel (or Bal / Baal, as the French Swiss call it) is not a particularly scenic trip, unless you like craptastic views of industrial towns, quarries, and nuclear power plant towers. Once I arrived in Basel... things still didn't look much better; the sunshine and "warm" weather I'd been expecting had failed to materialize, and my day in the city was grey, cold, and damp. But once you manage to get past all that, Basel actually has a few cool offerings.

Most important, there is this little creperie tucked away off a main road in the Old Town area. It's a little hole-in-the-wall type of place, but Swiss style, meaning it has lots of cute, cozy seating inside, eclectic decorations on the walls, and paper plates to serve their very delicious crepes.

Post-crepe, it's easy to stumble upon the Rathaus (city hall), which happens to be very red and covered with murals and golden statues, and the Muenster church, both within the Old Town section.


If you're lucky, not only will the Muenster provide you with a break from the grossness of Basel, but it will also have organs playing and choirs singing in some of the little chapels as you stroll through and imagine you're a monk. (That's what you're supposed to do when you walk through churches and cathedrals, right?)

Couple these sites with two museums (Cartoon & Comics Museum and the Tinguely Museum, which was crazy and awesome and very bizarre all in one) and I filled a whole day there, with no time left to cross between the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany that meet on the northern section of the Rhein river. Overall a nice trip, but Basel isn't winning any beauty contests in my book.