With Christmas just around the corner we are re-visiting the world of That Time When (like I promised at the beginning of the year) to bring you a few festive tales to get you in the Christmas spirit!

There was a Christmas a few years ago where I spent it at a zoo – I know that sounds pretty random but believe it or not the zoo was open on Christmas Day In Switzerland. We were inter-railling around the country for the whole of the festive season and knew that we would be in Basel for Christmas Day and decided to look into what would actually be open on the 25th.

From lots of looking about on the internet we discovered that the local zoo was going to be open. We thought that this was really random as we travel a lot at Christmas and it is very rare to find something, especially a tourist attraction, open. So we thought what a perfect thing to do on the day.

Now, we had already been in Switzerland for a week and a half and it was chilly but reasonable enough to walk around and feel ok. We woke up Christmas Day and it was the coldest day yet. It was really bitter. We went to the zoo but the whole time we were there we felt absolutely freezing. The first thing we did was have a hot chocolate and a coffee. The cafe had put Christmas trees made of tree stalks and Chocolate wrapped in foyle on the table which meant you could help yourself to the sweet treats.

We got to the zoo pretty much as it opened which meant that it was quite quiet when we got there but when we left it was getting quite busy. It was lovely seeing the animals as they are one of my favourite things in the world but it was so cold that we could not get comfortable the whole time.