After our adventures with particle accelerators we headed North into France and the border city of Strasbourg. However, in a recurring theme of this vacation, the road to Strasbourg was closed. It wasn’t quite as closed as the road that ended in a 40-foot-tall wall (literally. The road just stopped at a gigantic wall. It was all very Shel Silverstein), but it was still impassable by automobile.
Our only map at the time was that of the rail lines through Europe, which wasn’t exactly the most useful for this particular situation. Therefore we stopped at a gas station and I was promptly gang-pressed into service as back-seat navigator. It is no secret that I kind of like being a back-seat driver, so this was a happy situation for all involved. With the aid of the map we began our trip down the alternate path of the French countryside. I won’t say that this was the most direct or quickest route, but it was extremely scenic.
The weather was beautiful again as we passed through tiny village after tiny village. Each one had its own personality and each was as beautiful and quaint as the one before. Along the way we saw a castle atop a nearby hill and so decided to take a break to stretch our legs and see another ancient fortification.
We arrived at the castle and walked a short distance up the hill to the front gate. Nobody was around, so we wandered inside to see what was going on. What we found was a somewhat surprised (but extremely nice) lady who took our money and then promptly locked us inside. It turns out that this was the only worker in the castle, and so she was the ticket vendor, gift store cashier, tour guide, custodian and security force. That’s a lot of hats for one person, so you don’t take any chances when three Americans and a giant dog show up at your castle. That’s how the English lost the colonies (or something, I’m not very good with history).
Anyway, we had managed to wander in right as she was about to give a tour to a group of teenagers. Just five minutes later and we would have been greeted with a giant closed and locked door. Us having no siege engines (We couldn’t check them at the airport), we would have had no way of touring the castle.
The castle itself (like the other castles before it) was incredible. We crossed a real live drawbridge, got to see the cell of the famous French womanizer Maribou, descended 200+ steps to the dungeons, saw a gigantic well that seemed to go down forever (the tour guide dropped some water down the well and it took ~8 seconds for the water to travel down and sound to travel back up), and finally emerged once again in the (thankfully empty) moat at the base of the castle.
The tour guide was kind enough to unlock the castle doors (but only after we had purchased some items at the gift store) and so we climbed back into the car, rejoined the freeway, and cruised the remaining distance to Strasbourg.
The most prevalent landmark in Strasbourg is the gigantic Notre Dame Cathedral . Most large towns have at least one of these mammoth structures, and they are all quite impressive. This particular cathedral is made from a dark brown stone and appears to be some form of iron when viewed at a distance. It’s huge size, angular features, and aforementioned metallic appearance all converge to give this structure a German industrial feel. Closing one’s eyes, one can almost see giant clockwork steam airships circling the uppermost towers.
Speaking of the uppermost towers, that’s where we headed. For a very reasonable fee one can climb up the 300+ stairs to a height of 66 meters. From this landing it is possible to see literally miles in every direction. I’m running out of ways to describe spectacular views, so I’ll just say that it was well worth the workout to get to the top.
After the cathedral we bid a heartfelt goodbye to Lynn and Loki. Many many thanks to Lynn for being an awesome friend. She put up with us for a week without complaint, which if you know me is no easy feat!
One thing that the readers of this blog may not know is that most of our trip hasn’t really been planned out. We came to Europe with a start date, an end date, and a general outline of the things that we wanted to see and do. We’ve pretty much been playing it by ear ever since.
This has afforded us a ton of flexibility, but it is not without its drawbacks. Specifically, we decided to spend another night in Strasbourg before heading to Paris. We had only booked the previous hotel room for one night, and learned that neither the hotel we stayed at nor their sister hotel had any rooms for the near future.
We would find this message repeated at the next few hotels that we visited, and so we were starting to consider our plan B options when we finally found a hotel with a room. This was the hotel Grillion, which seems to mean “Jimminy Cricket” in French. This is a place that rents rooms that can be described as “Spartan” and more accurately described as “closets built for tiny French midgets who don’t use the toilet or shower”. Lest you think I exaggerate, I hit my head on the ceiling of the room not once, but twice during my stay. Shaq would have needed to crawl around on hands and knees.
Regardless, it fit our criteria of “private space with walls, ceiling, and locking door” so we made do. Surprisingly, they had free internet access, which was nice as it allowed us to update status and do some internet-type maintenance.
Once we had acquired a “room” for the night our minds turned back to touristy pursuits, and so we decided to take a boat tour of Strasbourg. The tour was quite relaxing. The sun was shining down on our open-topped boat as we gently drifted down the river to the accompaniment of our pre-recorded narration.
We saw the many bridges of Strasbourg, the new administration buildings for the EU, and “the tower of torture” which was probably not a ride at Disney despite the catchy name. The part of the city in which we spent most of our time is an island in the middle of the Rhine, river that flows through the town. However, in our first day-and-a-half, we’d managed to only see about half the island, so taking the boat tour informed us about which parts we might want to explore in our last half-day in Strasbourg. As a result, after enjoying breakfast at the hotel on our last morning here, we headed out to explore La Petite France district, which made for some good photography.
We had some additional time in the city before our train ride to Paris today so we took a sightseeing tram around the city. This was accompanied by some narration explaining the sights of the town. Interestingly, the background music to this narration was Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” rendered as Muzak. As one can imagine, this made it difficult to concentrate on the narration.
The guide would be talking about how such-and-such building used to be an abbatoir and I’d be whaling on my air guitar and shrieking “There stands a LAY-deeeee we all know-oh-oh!” . So pretty much all I know about Strasbourg is that they rocked out.
So, that was Strasbourg. We enjoyed it immensely and would highly recommend it on any itinerary in France. Now onto Paris…
Our only map at the time was that of the rail lines through Europe, which wasn’t exactly the most useful for this particular situation. Therefore we stopped at a gas station and I was promptly gang-pressed into service as back-seat navigator. It is no secret that I kind of like being a back-seat driver, so this was a happy situation for all involved. With the aid of the map we began our trip down the alternate path of the French countryside. I won’t say that this was the most direct or quickest route, but it was extremely scenic.
The weather was beautiful again as we passed through tiny village after tiny village. Each one had its own personality and each was as beautiful and quaint as the one before. Along the way we saw a castle atop a nearby hill and so decided to take a break to stretch our legs and see another ancient fortification.
We arrived at the castle and walked a short distance up the hill to the front gate. Nobody was around, so we wandered inside to see what was going on. What we found was a somewhat surprised (but extremely nice) lady who took our money and then promptly locked us inside. It turns out that this was the only worker in the castle, and so she was the ticket vendor, gift store cashier, tour guide, custodian and security force. That’s a lot of hats for one person, so you don’t take any chances when three Americans and a giant dog show up at your castle. That’s how the English lost the colonies (or something, I’m not very good with history).
Anyway, we had managed to wander in right as she was about to give a tour to a group of teenagers. Just five minutes later and we would have been greeted with a giant closed and locked door. Us having no siege engines (We couldn’t check them at the airport), we would have had no way of touring the castle.
The castle itself (like the other castles before it) was incredible. We crossed a real live drawbridge, got to see the cell of the famous French womanizer Maribou, descended 200+ steps to the dungeons, saw a gigantic well that seemed to go down forever (the tour guide dropped some water down the well and it took ~8 seconds for the water to travel down and sound to travel back up), and finally emerged once again in the (thankfully empty) moat at the base of the castle.
The tour guide was kind enough to unlock the castle doors (but only after we had purchased some items at the gift store) and so we climbed back into the car, rejoined the freeway, and cruised the remaining distance to Strasbourg.
The most prevalent landmark in Strasbourg is the gigantic Notre Dame Cathedral . Most large towns have at least one of these mammoth structures, and they are all quite impressive. This particular cathedral is made from a dark brown stone and appears to be some form of iron when viewed at a distance. It’s huge size, angular features, and aforementioned metallic appearance all converge to give this structure a German industrial feel. Closing one’s eyes, one can almost see giant clockwork steam airships circling the uppermost towers.
Speaking of the uppermost towers, that’s where we headed. For a very reasonable fee one can climb up the 300+ stairs to a height of 66 meters. From this landing it is possible to see literally miles in every direction. I’m running out of ways to describe spectacular views, so I’ll just say that it was well worth the workout to get to the top.
After the cathedral we bid a heartfelt goodbye to Lynn and Loki. Many many thanks to Lynn for being an awesome friend. She put up with us for a week without complaint, which if you know me is no easy feat!
One thing that the readers of this blog may not know is that most of our trip hasn’t really been planned out. We came to Europe with a start date, an end date, and a general outline of the things that we wanted to see and do. We’ve pretty much been playing it by ear ever since.
This has afforded us a ton of flexibility, but it is not without its drawbacks. Specifically, we decided to spend another night in Strasbourg before heading to Paris. We had only booked the previous hotel room for one night, and learned that neither the hotel we stayed at nor their sister hotel had any rooms for the near future.
We would find this message repeated at the next few hotels that we visited, and so we were starting to consider our plan B options when we finally found a hotel with a room. This was the hotel Grillion, which seems to mean “Jimminy Cricket” in French. This is a place that rents rooms that can be described as “Spartan” and more accurately described as “closets built for tiny French midgets who don’t use the toilet or shower”. Lest you think I exaggerate, I hit my head on the ceiling of the room not once, but twice during my stay. Shaq would have needed to crawl around on hands and knees.
Regardless, it fit our criteria of “private space with walls, ceiling, and locking door” so we made do. Surprisingly, they had free internet access, which was nice as it allowed us to update status and do some internet-type maintenance.
Once we had acquired a “room” for the night our minds turned back to touristy pursuits, and so we decided to take a boat tour of Strasbourg. The tour was quite relaxing. The sun was shining down on our open-topped boat as we gently drifted down the river to the accompaniment of our pre-recorded narration.
We saw the many bridges of Strasbourg, the new administration buildings for the EU, and “the tower of torture” which was probably not a ride at Disney despite the catchy name. The part of the city in which we spent most of our time is an island in the middle of the Rhine, river that flows through the town. However, in our first day-and-a-half, we’d managed to only see about half the island, so taking the boat tour informed us about which parts we might want to explore in our last half-day in Strasbourg. As a result, after enjoying breakfast at the hotel on our last morning here, we headed out to explore La Petite France district, which made for some good photography.
We had some additional time in the city before our train ride to Paris today so we took a sightseeing tram around the city. This was accompanied by some narration explaining the sights of the town. Interestingly, the background music to this narration was Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” rendered as Muzak. As one can imagine, this made it difficult to concentrate on the narration.
The guide would be talking about how such-and-such building used to be an abbatoir and I’d be whaling on my air guitar and shrieking “There stands a LAY-deeeee we all know-oh-oh!” . So pretty much all I know about Strasbourg is that they rocked out.
So, that was Strasbourg. We enjoyed it immensely and would highly recommend it on any itinerary in France. Now onto Paris…
That's how I like to travel, too! Just a basic plan of action. I can't stand to have every hour of my trip planned out. Too much pressure!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you guys had a great time!