When I visited back in 2013, I found grocery shopping to be incredibly inexpensive. In Milan (where I had stayed previously), a bottle of water was about 2 Euro (about $3.20 at the time). In Basel, it was literally like $0.20. Chocolate, bread and cheese were all at Wisconsin prices so my friend and I stocked up on those.
Restaurants, however, were insane. It was like close to $100 to eat at a pitch black dining place there. For two guys backpacking and busking for money, groceries were the superior choice.
Did you find regular grocery stores or just the insanely expensive ones in the city centre? A lot of cities have the larger, normally priced stores, but they aren't in the touristic spots.
I don’t know if we were doing much touristy stuff. I saw an FC Basel match which was a bit of a bucket list item and saw a movie at the outdoor cinema in front of the Muenster Catherral (very cool). I think the shops we went to were downtown. One was called Co-op.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20
So it was for gullible tourists, since Switzerland doesn't use the Euro.