Germany Trip Day 4

Today was awesome! Today Mark and I got to cross France off our countries-to-visit list. We only had one day and only one city to explore, but I will take it. And we loved every minute of it.

Strasbourg is right on the border of Germany and to be honest it still looked like a German town to me. But I guess that’s to be expected since it has gone between French and German rule numerous times. I have loved seeing all the window boxes here overflowing with flowers and greenery.

The Strasbourg cathedral blew us away. We didn’t expect it to be that enormous. Jeff couldn’t get us and the entire cathedral all in one picture.

We settled for portions of it…

While inside the cathedral, a tourist group speaking in Chinese were laughing and each person from the group came up to this little stone puppy and rubbed its head. We never did find out why they did it, but we followed like good little sheep and rubbed the cute puppy’s head too, just in case it was a good-luck thing.

Also inside the cathedral is an astronomical clock. This wasn’t the original clock built in the cathedral, but the third one which was built in 1843. Still old and cool. We were there at 11:00 am and waited excitedly for something cool to happen on the hour. The only thing to happen was the Grim Reaper rang the bell twice and an angel figurine walked across the Grim Reaper and a new figurine of a bowman came out. If you blinked, you missed it. Lame, right?

Here’s a close up of the Grim Reaper.

We found out we could pay an exorbitant amount of money to climb up into the tower of the cathedral and check out the view from the roof.  So of course we decided to do it! The stairwell we used to get to the roof was on the outer part of the building. What we didn’t know (until we reached 200 steps up) was that the openings to the outside from the stairwell got increasingly bigger and reach from head to toe in some places. This, unfortunately was where Mark turned right around and headed back down to wait for us. If the openings had only been smaller, like tiny windows he totally would have made it. He gets points for trying, though.

This was my first view from the roof. So cool. And high up!

From the roof we got a great view of the rest of the tower/spire thing. Still so very high. I wonder how many people fell off this cathedral while building it? All in the name of the church, right?

It was a cold day in Strasburg, but not freezing. It was windy as well, but it felt great on top of the roof after having climbed 330 steps. And yes, I counted each one of them, even if the sign at the ticket office told me there were 330. I had to make sure they were right.

Jeff and Alison admiring the tower from the roof.

I wasn’t able to snap too many pictures on the way down from the roof of the cathedral since that would mean I was holding lots of people up but I got a few good pictures of the flying buttresses.

Poor Mark and Jeff had to suffer through Alison and me stopping at every souvenir shop along the way. But sometimes it pays off. Alison found this great hat which she needed since the wind was chilly. The guy who she bought it from made sure she wore it the right way so the fabric flowers were on the side and not in front, which he said was more ‘chic’. Doesn’t she look beautiful?

Does this scene look familiar to you? If you’ve seen Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows it probably would. This is from the opening of the movie where the buildings in front of the cathedral blow up.

Once we’d had our fill of the cathedral we were ready to find some food. Man, were we hungry. We left our lunch choosing up to Jeff and Alison since they speak French and know French cuisine. We walked around quite a bit since we were looking for something kind of off the beaten path, away from the crowds but ended up back near the cathedral at an Italian restaurant that also served French food.

I’ve kind of been the odd man out this trip with speaking different languages. Jeff speaks fluent German and French, Mark understands a lot of German and some French to get by and Alison is fluent in French. I have no idea what anyone is talking about on this trip but I sure know how to order a delicious Coke. No matter what country I’m in, at least I can order this and be understood.

Like in any country, different regions have different foods they are known for or are their popular dish. I ordered the ‘tarte flambee’ which looks like this.

It’s basically an Italian pizza but with thinner crust and has a cream-based sauce with onions and ham on top. It was delicious! I ate the whole thing. Well, I did let Mark try one slice. He wasn’t a fan since he prefers red sauce on his pizzas. He ordered quiche Lorraine which was pretty good too.

While the boys walked back to the car to add more time to our parking meter Alison and I stayed by the river to people watch and take pictures. I had some time to play with my new camera and the different settings. Pretty cool. 

Another river shot, but black and white.

Strasbourg is just beautiful. So many picturesque places.

After lunch we walked to the old section of the city, la Petite France. It is a neighborhood of the city with medieval buildings, cobblestone roads and lots of shopping.  It was wonderful. We found a yummy pastry shop which we just HAD to go in. Each couple bought 4 items each. We are super gluttonous but we have no idea when we will ever get back to France. 

Here’s the box of yummy goodness. Notice there are only three desserts? The fourth one never made it into the box. Mark and I snarffed down that chocolate filled croissant in less than a minute. I don’t think even a crumb fell to the street.

We left Strasbourg around 5:30 pm and headed back to Heidelberg. We arrived back to the hotel around 7:00 and headed up to the executive lounge for a free dinner and Jeff and Alison taught us a new card game, Hanabi. We will call the kids tonight and then we are off to bed. Tomorrow we meet Mark and Jeff’s cousin, Karlheinz and then drive the rest of the way to Konstanz, Germany, right on the border of Switzerland. Woo hoo!