Where's Bertie? He's still at the Stellplatz at Kehl.
Weather: Not as sunny as the wall-to-wall forecast, but hot (29 degrees)
We were longer on the tram into Strasbourg this morning, all the way over to Gare Central. There we made a small meal of navigating away from the station*, and two minutes later had to recover with second breakfast:
We were both obviously keen to dive into those croissants. Incidentally, Mick's coffee on its own would have been €3.80, but the coffee and coissant together came to €3.60. Similar pricing with my cup of tea was the only reason for me having the croissant.
Once heading in the right direction, it was only a five minute walk to the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, where we nearly failed the initiative test of how to get into the building. Once in, it was an unexpected bonus to find that they have an old-codger rate, so Mick's entry cost less than half of mine (€3.50 vs €7.50).
The museum wasn't as big as I'd expected (and there were, I would say, an excessive number of school groups all in there for the space available), but it easily filled a couple of hours. The word 'contemporary' in the title had us a little concerned as to what we would find inside, but the amount of what I would class as 'contemporary nonsense' was minimal and we enjoyed the vast majority.
We witnessed the spider walking across the room. The blurb about it fell into my definition of 'nonsense' but the exhibit itself was fun.
As we looked at this painting, Mick said "I think that thing in the tank is a coelacanth." It's a word that cropped up in a crossword a while ago, and not being familiar with it myself, I questioned Mick as to how in the world he had it stored somewhere in his head...
I then read the accompanying blurb
Leaving the museum not long before they closed for lunch, over the covered bridge we went...
One of the points of interest from yesterday's little train tour. We were told lots about it, only some of which I can now remember.
...and having ignored the 'Terrasse' sign at one end of the bridge, by the time we reached the staircase at the other end, curiosity had got the better of me. It turns out you can go out onto the roof of this bridge and it's an excellent viewpoint:
Our packed lunch was had in between the two bridges shown in the snaps above, before we walked through Petite France and back to the cathedral.
The photo of the front that I forgot to take yesterday.
There, after a bit of loitering in the shade, we jumped on the other Petit Train for a tour of Neustadt - the district of Strasbourg to the NE of Grande Ile (the island in the River Ill upon which the old part of the city is situated). It's the area developed whilst the city was in German ownership (1871 to 1918), and is full of grand buildings in various styles with 'neo' on the front (Baroque, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance). Opinions were divided on that tour. I liked it because whereas we would have seen most of what was covered by yesterday's route anyway, even if not with a commentary, we would not have ventured into the Neustadt by ourselves and I was happy to see the overly grand buildings (even if I would struggle to differentiate the Neo-Baroque from the Neo-Gothic). Mick was much less taken with this route, on the basis that one grand building looked much like the next, and the points of interest were too spread out, with lots of dead space as we drove in between them, and lots of waiting at traffic lights.
We arrived back at the Cathedral just a few minutes before the free walking tour started, and out of curiosity, I wanted to catch the start of it, as it had a different guide today. He was much better than yesterday's guide, and it would have been interesting to tag along with the group, but the day was now hot, we'd been on the go for hours, and the tour was going to last an hour and three quarters. As the group moved on, we veered off and went to an ice cream shop. The ice cream was expensive and disappointing. Perhaps we should have waited until we got back into Germany where ice cafes are everywhere and we're yet to find a bad one.
Bertie is parked at 'Stellplatz am Wasserturm'. This is at the end of the street.
With it being 34 degrees in Bertie when we got back, the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting outside. Now, at 8pm it has just dipped below 30 degrees inside. I'm not complaining. This is probably our last hot day of this summer (the forecast for the next couple of weeks suggests temperatures in the low- to mid-twenties), and I shall miss the heat, even if it did get a bit uncomfortable for a few days.
(*the navigation element of Google Maps on my not-very-old phone has developed a problem and frequently doesn't know where I am (even though Google Maps not in navigation mode knows exactly where I am). I have to restart my phone to make it work again.)
Weather: Not as sunny as the wall-to-wall forecast, but hot (29 degrees)
We were longer on the tram into Strasbourg this morning, all the way over to Gare Central. There we made a small meal of navigating away from the station*, and two minutes later had to recover with second breakfast:
Once heading in the right direction, it was only a five minute walk to the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, where we nearly failed the initiative test of how to get into the building. Once in, it was an unexpected bonus to find that they have an old-codger rate, so Mick's entry cost less than half of mine (€3.50 vs €7.50).
The museum wasn't as big as I'd expected (and there were, I would say, an excessive number of school groups all in there for the space available), but it easily filled a couple of hours. The word 'contemporary' in the title had us a little concerned as to what we would find inside, but the amount of what I would class as 'contemporary nonsense' was minimal and we enjoyed the vast majority.
Leaving the museum not long before they closed for lunch, over the covered bridge we went...
...and having ignored the 'Terrasse' sign at one end of the bridge, by the time we reached the staircase at the other end, curiosity had got the better of me. It turns out you can go out onto the roof of this bridge and it's an excellent viewpoint:
Our packed lunch was had in between the two bridges shown in the snaps above, before we walked through Petite France and back to the cathedral.
There, after a bit of loitering in the shade, we jumped on the other Petit Train for a tour of Neustadt - the district of Strasbourg to the NE of Grande Ile (the island in the River Ill upon which the old part of the city is situated). It's the area developed whilst the city was in German ownership (1871 to 1918), and is full of grand buildings in various styles with 'neo' on the front (Baroque, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance). Opinions were divided on that tour. I liked it because whereas we would have seen most of what was covered by yesterday's route anyway, even if not with a commentary, we would not have ventured into the Neustadt by ourselves and I was happy to see the overly grand buildings (even if I would struggle to differentiate the Neo-Baroque from the Neo-Gothic). Mick was much less taken with this route, on the basis that one grand building looked much like the next, and the points of interest were too spread out, with lots of dead space as we drove in between them, and lots of waiting at traffic lights.
We arrived back at the Cathedral just a few minutes before the free walking tour started, and out of curiosity, I wanted to catch the start of it, as it had a different guide today. He was much better than yesterday's guide, and it would have been interesting to tag along with the group, but the day was now hot, we'd been on the go for hours, and the tour was going to last an hour and three quarters. As the group moved on, we veered off and went to an ice cream shop. The ice cream was expensive and disappointing. Perhaps we should have waited until we got back into Germany where ice cafes are everywhere and we're yet to find a bad one.
With it being 34 degrees in Bertie when we got back, the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting outside. Now, at 8pm it has just dipped below 30 degrees inside. I'm not complaining. This is probably our last hot day of this summer (the forecast for the next couple of weeks suggests temperatures in the low- to mid-twenties), and I shall miss the heat, even if it did get a bit uncomfortable for a few days.
(*the navigation element of Google Maps on my not-very-old phone has developed a problem and frequently doesn't know where I am (even though Google Maps not in navigation mode knows exactly where I am). I have to restart my phone to make it work again.)
Asking artists in the general to explain their work is often a regrettable descent into a dark rabbit hole. Their metaphysical ramblings are usually so abstruse as to cast doubt on whether they have any meaning at all.
ReplyDeleteI think it's even worse when someone else gives their own view of what they think the artist had in mind. As I observed when we visited Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it's generally best not to read the interpretive panels (I just can't help myself sometimes!).
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