Where's Bertie? He's in a commercial Stellplatz in Kehl, where it costs €12 per 24 hours. Water and electricity are available at extra cost. Exact location: 48.563592, 7.814013
Weather: Some cloudy periods that threatened (but didn't deliver) rain, then brightening as the afternoon went on. 28 degrees.
We had intended to stay for two nights in Ettlingen, and I had a run/walk planned for today, taking in a nearby hill and some sort of a tower thereon. That was still my intention half an hour after I'd finished my breakfast, but just as I was poised to get suitably attired, I looked at the weather forecast.
A couple of days ago the forecast had told me that we were due to have dry, warm and sunny days until the end of time (or at least for the two weeks covered by the forecast). Today it told me that tomorrow was going to be the only day without any rain in the next two weeks. Whilst I fully expect that not all of the rain will materialise (like today's didn't), we could see the appeal of visiting Strasbourg on the one guaranteed sunny day: tomorrow.
After half an hour or so of contemplating travel and accommodation options, we hit the road. I'd wanted to stay at the campsite on the W side of Strasbourg, but there was no room at the inn tonight. So, to Kehl we came, on the opposite side of the Rhein, and thus in Germany, rather than France. On the plus side, it's half the price of the campsite; on the downside, it's over twice the distance away from the city centre (3km vs 7.2km).
Pulling into the half-empty Stellplatz here, we bought a ticket for 2 days, and after a cup of tea and a bit of sustenance, off we headed to the tram stop 1100m away. There we had a modicum of difficulty finding the ticket machine, and once we had located it we feared the tram was going to go without us as two girls battled on and on to get it to dispense a ticket. They eventually gave up and I know not what their problem was, as it gave us our 24-hour travel cards without a problem.
Within half an hour we were in Strasbourg with absolutely no plan as to what to do with ourselves, so we did the most obvious thing and headed to the cathedral.
This was our first view, which already told us it was a *highly* impressive building. Somehow I completely failed to take any other photos of the front.
Inside was just as impressive (not that this snap is at all illustrative of the elements that made it so)
It was 1430 as we emerged, and a free walking tour (for which read 'pay what you think is appropriate') had just started outside. We stopped and listened to what they had to say about the cathedral, but Mick wasn't in the market for continuing on with the group, so we took to aimless wandering instead.
I had no idea when we admired that building on the corner, and took this photo, that it was the very place mentioned by Humphrey in an email received this morning. We did a full round of the cathedral looking for Maison Kammerzell before discovering it was the very building we'd already been oohing over.
Palais Rohan, now housing 3(?) museums.
Cathedral square with more characterful buildings. Under the blue umbrellas were two caricature artists, both of whom had a subject as we passed. Those subjects looked nothing like each other. The depictions we saw in progress were identical.
Random street
Consulting t'internet I decided that Petite France was maybe worth a look and we were just on our way over there when we decided instead to jump on the Petit Train for a guided tour. There are two routes, and we opted for the one that included Petite France.
For the price (€8 each) it was informative enough, although don't now ask me to repeat anything we were told! Getting back off the 'train' at the end, we opted to walk over to Petite France after all, as that has struck us as the most striking area in what is undoubtedly an attractive city.
Looking up river to the tannery (on the right bank)
Looking down river
This heron came and stood almost in front of us and was clearly well habituated to people
With rush-hour now upon us, back to the tram we headed. It wasn't as crowded as expected: busy, but we got seats, even if not initially together.
Back in Kehl, rather than heading straight back to Bertie, we took a wander down the high street and into the main square. After Strasbourg it was rather mundane, but it did cause this to happen:
Bonus, no washing up to do tonight!
After wandering back to Bertie (we might have been lazy and caught the bus, if the last bus of the day hadn't already left, at the crazy-early hour of 1732), we found Bertie to now be in a Stellplatz that would be full, if it wasn't for Bertie's neighbour on his door side being parked in the middle of two spaces. I wonder if anyone will try to squeeze inbetween us? (There weren't marked spaces in Ettlingen last night, and the gap between us and our neighbour (we were there first; it wasn't us who parked badly!) was rather tight for another van to squeeze in, but bigger than it was polite to leave. We were surprised to open the blind on that side this morning to find that someone had manoeuvred into the tight space overnight, without us noticing.)
Weather: Some cloudy periods that threatened (but didn't deliver) rain, then brightening as the afternoon went on. 28 degrees.
We had intended to stay for two nights in Ettlingen, and I had a run/walk planned for today, taking in a nearby hill and some sort of a tower thereon. That was still my intention half an hour after I'd finished my breakfast, but just as I was poised to get suitably attired, I looked at the weather forecast.
A couple of days ago the forecast had told me that we were due to have dry, warm and sunny days until the end of time (or at least for the two weeks covered by the forecast). Today it told me that tomorrow was going to be the only day without any rain in the next two weeks. Whilst I fully expect that not all of the rain will materialise (like today's didn't), we could see the appeal of visiting Strasbourg on the one guaranteed sunny day: tomorrow.
After half an hour or so of contemplating travel and accommodation options, we hit the road. I'd wanted to stay at the campsite on the W side of Strasbourg, but there was no room at the inn tonight. So, to Kehl we came, on the opposite side of the Rhein, and thus in Germany, rather than France. On the plus side, it's half the price of the campsite; on the downside, it's over twice the distance away from the city centre (3km vs 7.2km).
Pulling into the half-empty Stellplatz here, we bought a ticket for 2 days, and after a cup of tea and a bit of sustenance, off we headed to the tram stop 1100m away. There we had a modicum of difficulty finding the ticket machine, and once we had located it we feared the tram was going to go without us as two girls battled on and on to get it to dispense a ticket. They eventually gave up and I know not what their problem was, as it gave us our 24-hour travel cards without a problem.
Within half an hour we were in Strasbourg with absolutely no plan as to what to do with ourselves, so we did the most obvious thing and headed to the cathedral.
It was 1430 as we emerged, and a free walking tour (for which read 'pay what you think is appropriate') had just started outside. We stopped and listened to what they had to say about the cathedral, but Mick wasn't in the market for continuing on with the group, so we took to aimless wandering instead.
Consulting t'internet I decided that Petite France was maybe worth a look and we were just on our way over there when we decided instead to jump on the Petit Train for a guided tour. There are two routes, and we opted for the one that included Petite France.
For the price (€8 each) it was informative enough, although don't now ask me to repeat anything we were told! Getting back off the 'train' at the end, we opted to walk over to Petite France after all, as that has struck us as the most striking area in what is undoubtedly an attractive city.
With rush-hour now upon us, back to the tram we headed. It wasn't as crowded as expected: busy, but we got seats, even if not initially together.
Back in Kehl, rather than heading straight back to Bertie, we took a wander down the high street and into the main square. After Strasbourg it was rather mundane, but it did cause this to happen:
After wandering back to Bertie (we might have been lazy and caught the bus, if the last bus of the day hadn't already left, at the crazy-early hour of 1732), we found Bertie to now be in a Stellplatz that would be full, if it wasn't for Bertie's neighbour on his door side being parked in the middle of two spaces. I wonder if anyone will try to squeeze inbetween us? (There weren't marked spaces in Ettlingen last night, and the gap between us and our neighbour (we were there first; it wasn't us who parked badly!) was rather tight for another van to squeeze in, but bigger than it was polite to leave. We were surprised to open the blind on that side this morning to find that someone had manoeuvred into the tight space overnight, without us noticing.)
No comments:
Post a Comment