15 - 5/15/2015 On to Strasbourg

Friday - May 15

Mist-drizzle from the sky in the morning petered out by early afternoon. We found that hopscotching up the wine road, stopping here, skipping there instead of driving through each and every village suited us best. We spent the most time in Kayserburg, walking around, taking it in for about an hour, and in four other towns. The practical matter of time and of sort of seeing similar things over and over (very nice things, to be sure) set the pace.

One of Pam's favorite cars - we found two in the lot:

Stopped at a church along the route - high on a hill with a view:

Norm eating a pastry on one of the church benches:

We saw a number of these crosses in the vineyards:

We made it to Strasbourg by 5 PM and settled into our hotel in the heart of the city, about a quarter mile from the Strasbourg Cathedral. It wasn't even on our radar until we read something to the effect that if you miss this cathedral all of the others that you see won't make up for it. Such pressure. The walk over was pleasant, passing many sidewalk cafes and points of interest. Pam finally got her first gelato cone in three days and swore that it was the very best gelato she had ever eaten. Norm reminded her that she said the same thing about the gelato three days ago. Checkmate.

View from our balcony - the train station is across the street:

 The cathedral has some high tech scaffolding on it as cleaning continues, although most of the exterior is done - the stone has a reddish pink hue, as does that used for other churches and older public buildings in the city. We'll assume that this cleaning didn't happen overnight. Funny thing is, all of the souvenir shops sell postcards showing the church in its completely pre-scrubbed state, which is to say a black grunge fest out of Tolkien's Land of Morder. This suggests that not many people are buying post cards anymore and it's not worth it to make new ones. Or perhaps the out of date cards now have nostalgic value, sort of like postage stamps? Inside the cathedral inside is cavernous and somewhat overbearing.  What looked like chairs and equipment for a full symphony was setting up before the alter and we thought we might stick around to hear what the acoustics in a stone space the size of two jumbo jet airplane hangers would sound like. Seems other tourists had the same idea and were filling the pews to wait. Pam took it upon herself to find out when the music would start. The answer? The next evening. We kept it to ourselves and moseyed out the exit.

 There were armed soldiers walking around the area - 

just observing: