Welcome to my second post of the local gem safari ! In this new series you can send me out to places of your choice and I will report back to you what I stumble upon!
This is how it works: At the end of this post you find the perimeter within which you can send me around once every week. Grab the coordinates or the name of the place your interested in from google maps and post it to the comments. You can either specify what you want me to capture at that location Or you simply leave it up to me to decide what I find worth reporting from there. The proposal with the most upvotes after the first payout will become my next destination and will be rewarded with 25% of the earnings of the resulting post.
And the winning proposal after the last local gem safari came from: @jamtaylor !
Congratulations! 🍾 :-)
And so I geared up and set out to where jamtaylor had sent me: to the Wasserturm Park in Basel!
Coordinates: 47.5286756, 7.5903213
I had already heard about the Wasserturm (Water tower) Park in Basel, yet haven´t been there so far. I was once recommended to go there during winter times with my kids. The water tower stands on top of a hill and I was told that it would be a nice place to go with the sledges.
Half-way up the hill I made a first halt to have a look backwards on downtown Basel. In the very background you can see the 178 m high Roche Tower, the headquarters of the swiss pharma giant.
The weather was already far away from being ideal when I had set out, but when I arrived on top of the hill...
...it started pouring!
But then, behold! What did I see there through the splashy front-shield of my car??
Is this...wow, unbelievable...
I had to be explore this! So I waited a while for the rain to settle...
...and went stalking. And indeed, it was what I had thought! Not one of my miniatures this time...
...but a life-sized Diplodocus, a giant sauropod of the late jurassic period...
...happily grazing on the trees in the Wasserturm Park! Wow, how surprising to find such a gem in this location! (By the way, you can easily spot this guy via the satellite view of google maps!)
This is now the downward slope where the Basel kids go sledging in winter. The very little ones, I assume.
Turning by 180 degree and there it is, the parks eponymous water tower.
The tower was built in 1926 to serve the increasing demand for water of the growing district of Basel-Bruderholz. For an entrance fee of 1 Swiss franc one can enter the tower and climb up the 115 stairs to reach the viewing platform. 27 m above the ground and roughly 120 m above Basel.
After passing the revolving doors of the tower I felt like I had entered a little cathedral. The smell of polished wood, the accoustics and the dim light added to that impression.
The upper third of the tower had to be climbed via a narrow spiral staircase.
This bottom-up shot somewhat reminds me of a logarithmic nautilus spiral.
Finally, at the top! This viewing platform is known to provide one of the nicest 360 degree views over Basel and it´s region. Well, not today unfortunately...Still, you can see the Roche tower again...
...and some foothills of the Jura, the low mountain range south of Basel.
And the big guy was still there and grazing ;-)
I hope you enjoyed this weeks gem safari as much as I did.
I would love to do more of these excursions for you, so please let me know in the comments where you want me to go next!
This is the perimeter that I can cover for you:
15 km max from downtown Basel, Switzerland (47.560696, 7.586765):
- Go to google maps -> using this link <- and browse the map within a maximum distance of 15 km to Basel, Switzerland
- If you find something that catches your interest, right click on the location and select ´What's here?´from the context menu to obtain the latitude and longitude coordinates.
- Add the coordinates and/or the name of the place to the comments. If you wish you can further specify what exactly you would like me to report from there. I will use my GPS to get there as close as possible.
Don´t forget to also check out the previous post of the local gem safari:
Follow me at @shaka
100% of your upvote´s value will stay on Steemit bound to SP.
If you wish to further support my work you are most welcome to reblog this post.
Thank you!
All images were recorded by myself on September 19, 2016 with a Canon EOS 7D and a Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 lens.