EUROPE & DC '23 • Day 12: Strasbourg, France
- Bob Aron
- Sep 11, 2023
- 2 min read
STRASBOURG
STRASBOURG
No driving to some cute little town in the countryside today. That being said, the historic part of Strasbourg is pretty much another cute little town, inside the greater city ;-). After picking up Cliff at the airport, Sharon dropped us off near Petite France so we could do a boat tour, and she could manage her AirBnb client. Yvette and I do not do a lot of overly tourist things, like the On and Off buses, etc., but we often will do an hour boat tour, like the Bateaux Mouche in Paris. They give a view you can't get walking, and cover a lot of views in a short time. The one in Strasbourg goes through 'Petite France', nicknamed for the French military men that brought all kinds of nasty diseases with them, and then down next to the European Parliament buildings. The boat actually needs to go through a set of locks to during the trip. Small ones mind you, not like the Panama Canal, but they work the same way. It's such a clever concept, to use the water to raise the boats up the river.
After meeting up with Sharon for lunch, we walked through the Petite France area some more and took a quick visit into the cathedral. The Strasbourg cathedral was apparently the tallest building in the world for some time. It only has one spire, unlike Notre Dame in Paris, and many other similar cathedrals.
Inside the cathedral is an Astronomical Clock, similar to the one in Prague, where we're going tomorrow. After incorrectly hearing somewhere that these clocks were from a related creator, it turns out not to be so. The Strasbourg clock is the 3rd one that has been located within the Notre-Dame cathedral. The first over 600 years ago, but the latest created in the 1800s. The Prague clock is from the early 1400s! Crazy!
We had a chance to grab a big coffee ice cream confection at a cafe right in front of the cathedral. Mmm, mmm, mmm on a hot day. I swear I eat more ice cream on European vacations than at any other time! It's a shame we hadn't scheduled another day to visit with both Sharon and Cliff, but great to keep the SJSU I-Center meetings alive when we can. You will notice I have on my SJSU t-shirt in some of the photos. Like my Jimi Hendrix shirt used for the Jimi on the Road Facebook album, I now only bust these t-shirts out for special occasions. They are wearing pretty thin!
We capped off the evening by testing out some 70 year old eau de vie (pear) that Sharon had in the liquor cabinet. I'm pretty sure it's the oldest drink I've ever had, older than me! Pretty good!
And we'll miss Osiris, Sharons's adorable Shih Tzu
!
Comments