On my second day in Switzerland, Pramay and I went to see a few places in the north of Switzerland.
Our first destination was the Rheinfalls. This is apparently the biggest waterfall in Europe as far as volume of water going through it. Having seen it, that doesn’t surprise me. We got to the town where the falls are and got a ticket, which was valid for the castle and the waterfalls.
The castle is situated just next to the waterfall and has a really great view. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot to see in the castle – only a small museum. But on the way out, you get a few lookouts over the waterfall, including a view on the other end of a cave tunnel, which lets you get so close to the waterfall you get sprayed with water.
At the bottom of the hill, after we got out of the castle, we got on a boat which gave us a great view and took us to a nice park with a view of the waterfalls. We ate our lunch there and watched the waterfall.
We then tried to climb the hill to get an even better view of the falls and it was so worth it. This was definitely the best place to see the falls from.
After that, we headed back to Schaffhausen, which is the nearby town. We explored the town for a while until our train was supposed to come. The town is quite cute and old, so we enjoyed ourselves. Then we found this monastery/castle/fortification. We decided to go up to it and see if it cost money to get it. It turns out, it’s completely free to go in and go to the top, where there is absolutely the coolest view of the town. This was definitely our best discovery of the day.
We went back and caught our trains and went almost all the way back to Basel. We stopped off in a town that used to be a Roman town. They’ve preserved the ruins and made a museum, which was free with our travel pass. So we walked around there for a while. The place is called Augusta Raurica. They’ve got ruins of amphitheaters, temples, churches, and even city walls. It was pretty cool.
After exploring all we could manage, we went back to Basel, exhausted once again (this will be a recurring theme).
