Sunday October 27th, 2024. Viking Buri from Lyon to Viking Hiln in Basel, Switzerland
The image looks wonderful doesn’t it? I asked AI to create a bus ride through the French countryside. What I also asked was long and tiring…but I guess AI couldn’t figure that part out!
Our last cocktail reception on the Viking Buri. Stacy, Vange, Rob and Steve from Perth, Australia
We found out last evening at the disembarkation talk given by our Program Director Daniella, that there were about 90 of us who would be going on to do the cruise on the Rhone on the Viking Hiln for the next week. Viking had organized 3 buses for the 90 of us, so that meant we would not be very crowded on the bus for the transfer to Basel the next day.
Happy faces as we started the bus ride to Basel, Switzerland
Here we go off to Basel, Switzerland
We left the Viking Buri on Sunday morning at 9am. Our luggage had to be out of our cabins by 7:30am this morning, so we put our luggage out last evening and then kept our toiletries and the clothes we would be wearing today in our cabin.
Once we got off the Buri and to the pier we had to identify our luggage and get on bus 1A and our luggage was put on our bus, as we got on the bus. Our Guide for the day told us at this point that we would be going to Beaune, France from 11:30am to 1:45pm and that once we left Beaune we would still have a 3.5 hour bus ride to Basel, Switzerland. This meant that the entire day from 9am to 5pm would be spent travelling with the short break in Beaune for lunch on our own.
We immediately started to google how long the train from Lyon to Beaune was and found out that the train ride would have been 3 hours and 40 minutes with a brief change of trains about 20 minutes outside of Beaune to a TGV train. Yeesh! Why didn’t we think of this before today????
In hindsight we could have gone to Beaune yesterday for the wonderful Saturday market (via train) and stayed overnight in Beaune and then caught a train to Basel this morning so we would have had the afternoon in Basel to look around the town.
As it stood now we were captive on this bus to Basel and we would not have any opportunity to see anything in Basel other than the Viking Hiln which was going to depart Basel at 9pm this evening!
Wow, what a drag…..
I made use of my time on the bus writing the blog for Lyon and not doing much else. At least we had the best bus with a tag axle configuration and a panoramic sunroom, so the ride on the bus was much nicer than the other 2 buses that other Viking people were enjoying.
Photos from our last trip to Beaune in September 2015 at the Saturday market
When we went on our Uniworld Cruise 9 years ago one of the included tours from Lyon was a visit to Beaune on a Saturday so that we could enjoy the Saturday market. We fell in love with the beautiful walled town of Beaune, with its stunning architecture, cobblestone streets and quaint Saturday market which spilled out from the Halles in Beaune, to the surrounding, meandering streets. Beaune is set in the Burgundy winemaking region of France surrounded by the Côte d’Or vineyards so the wine theme is pervasive in everything about the town of Beaune. We were amazed to see a man roasting chickens next to a vendor selling women’s sweaters and hats, next to another vendor selling all different kinds of unique mushrooms. We often said to ourselves we should find a spot near Beaune to rent for a month and then explore the surrounding areas of France by train, spending our dreamy days shopping at the Saturday market and visiting the Halles to buy our meats, cheeses and vegetables.
Hospice de Beaune and the very unique polychromatic roof made of glazed flat tiles representative of the Burgundian architecture. Photo taken from our trip to Beaune in 2015
Sunday is not a good day to visit Beaune because many of the stores were closed. I had already visited the famous Hospices de Beaune the last time we were in Beaune which commenced In the aftermath of the 100 Years’ War in the 15th century when France was weakened. The countryside was devastated, and the population, which had also suffered from the Black Death, had halved. It was at this time that Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, inspired by Flemish hospital foundations, built the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune. Accompanied by his wife, Guigone de Salin, Nicolas Rolin wanted to offer the most needy the very best in medical care. In 1443, the Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune was built.
Wine in support of the Hotel Dieu or Hospices de Beaune
Every November there is a world famous wine auction in Beaune, held on the 3rd Sunday in November which is run by Sothebys. The funds raised from the wine auction support the local hospital in Beaune. The auction is held at the Halles de Beaune and will be held this year on November 17, 2024.
Main square of Beaune
After our guide walked us from the bus parking lot into the main square of Beaune next to the Halles we wandered off looking for new things to see in Beaune.
I remembered I had bought a cassis Dijon mustard in Beaune the lat time we were here, that I used to make my own salad dressings, so I wanted to get another jar of this same mustard to bring home with us.. Richard spoke to the shop owner in French who said that tourism has been very good this year in Beaune. The town attracts many rich tourists who he says come to sit in a cafe and drink very expensive bottles of wine and shop in this small Burgundian wine town.
Porte Sabine Nicolas dating back to 1770, Beaune. This is the quarter of the city where the wine merchants would typically gather
Wandering the cobblestone streets of Beaune, France
It was a stunning day to meander through Beaune
Entrance to a winery in Beaune This is a 13th century winery. It is thought that the Burgundy area of France is the oldest with wines having been produced since 300AD!
Intricate stonework on a building in Beaune, France
Having a ham and cheese baguette in a park in Beaune. The lady in the patisserie didn’t like Richard’s French so she switched to English! LOL! This is the first time on our trip that someone hasn’t responded to Richard in French when he spoke French to them.
Richard said the lady must have been from Paris originally with her snotty attitude!
We didn’t feel like sitting in a cafe for a long and leisurely, heavy as we wanted to try and get some steps in while we had some free time in Beaun. Instead of a cafe lunch, we grabbed a ham and cheese baguette as well as a cherry almond crumble tart which we shared sitting on a park bench enjoying one of the last few warm days of sunshine on our trip as we head north.
All too soon it was time to get back on the bus for the agonizing 3.5 hour drive to Basel, Switzerland. The clocks had changed last evening which is a full week ahead of when our clocks turn back in North America. This meant that as we were pulling into Basel to board the Viking Hiln, the sun was setting and we did not have much daylight left. It felt like the entire day of our vacation was wasted sitting on a bus during the daylight hours.
I set up our toiletries in our bathroom which we had brought with us and shortly thereafter our luggage arrived for me to unpack. The Viking Hiln is a replica of the Viking Buri so it was very easy to set up the cabin the same as we had it on the Buri. We are in cabin 211 this time as someone who was not on the Buri is occupying our cabin 209 and must have booked this journey before we did last Christmas, which means our bed is now facing the direction we are sailing - or North.
Our Aussie friends are directly across from us in cabin 210 and our other Aussie friends are in cabin 212, so we are all nicely close to each other if we need to knock on the door to make plans with each other!
Boarding the Viking Hiln in Basel, Switzerland This is about all we saw of Basel!
Waiting for the Welcome and orientation to the Viking Hiln
Of course we had to do the mandatory muster station drill when we arrived on the Hiln. The person checking our name off at the safety drill forgot to check our names off so at dinner our names were called for ‘failing to attend the safety briefing’ and we also got a letter under our door from the Captain for failing to attend the safety briefing. Yeesh!
We met our new Program Director Jackie, who hails from the UK. She introduced us to Torsten the Hotel Manager who sure talked a lot! Half of us on the Hiln have already been on the Buri for a week, but yet he had to go through every nitty gritty detail of the Welcome and Safety briefing which frankly make us quite late for our first dinner which was supposed to have started at 7:30pm and by the time we actually got fed it was 8:45pm.
No one who did the transfer with Viking from the Buri to the Hiln via a full day’s bus ride was very happy about the experience. We know that Viking has bundled together this 15 day cruise on the Rhone and the Rhine on which would normally be two separate cruises, but we would have much preferred an option for extra money of having been able to go on our own to the train station in Lyon and take the train to Basel with Viking bringing our identified luggage on the bus for those who didn’t want to take the train.
Now we can say we have been to Basel, Switzerland but that is like saying we’ve been to Winnipeg, Manitoba, when frankly all we ever did was visit the Winnipeg airport on a flight connection. We should really have figured this out better on the transfer from one ship to the other. I think we were just too trusting that Viking would get us from point A to point B in the fastest time possible. Instead the visit to Beaun was supposed to placate us into breaking up the bus ride from Lyon to Basel. Lesson learned. We will make sure we do our due diligence the next time…if there ever is a next time!
We made it an early night as all of us were pretty exhausted from the long bus ride. We set sail at 9pm for Breisach, Germany where we would arrive overnight.
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