Day 50: Strasbourg > Kehl (DE) > Strasbourg

Don’t worry if you are confused by where we went today. I’m confused too.

The last thing I expected to be doing today was making an impromptu trip back into Germany.

MBW: “Let’s go to Germany to do some shopping.”

MBW: “By tram.”

MBW: “It’s only one stop.”

Me: “OK.”

It all came about due to an earlier poor decision.

I should probably point out that we are in Strasbourg France, not Salzburg Austria, just to avoid any confusion. It’s an easy mistake to make.

You may recall that all we had planned for today was a walking tour with some small food tastings. We had to meet our guide at 10.00am near Kleber Monument in the middle of Strasbourg, and look for the red umbrella.

The forecast for today was overcast with a 12% chance of rain, which – as I’m sure you know – is code for “it might rain so take an umbrella, but you should probably take some sunscreen and a hat, just in case.”

To add to that, MBW advised me that it will be cold. So layers are the order of the day, plus a hat and an umbrella, plus a scarf.

We bought our daily tickets again, and caught the tram into the city.

Strasbourg is very flat. There is hardly a bump anywhere in the city. Strasbourg has 600,000 citizens and 300,000 push-bikes, so there are bike lanes and push-bikes everywhere.

We got into town about an hour early, so we went for a walk around to see what we could see. At around 9.30am we decided to go into Starbucks and get a coffee and a free pass to use their toilets.

You know how it is.

Starbucks was convenient not just because they have toilets, but because they look out across the square where the Kleber Monument is located.

And because they have coffee.

I’ve never been a fan of Starbucks at home, but Starbucks in the USA and here in Europe is OK.

Not the best coffee I’ve ever had, but not the worst either.

To use the toilets at Starbucks, you have to ask for the code, then you put that code into the keypad beside the door, and there is a satisfying click as the door unlocks. Not quite as high security as McDonald’s toilets in Milan which come with a security guard, but not too shabby either.

Maybe they are trying to stop people stealing the toilet paper.

So we drank our coffee and saw a red umbrella out near the Kleber Monument, so off we went. You never want to be the last guests to arrive.

It turns out that by the time we got there, we were the last guests to arrive … and simultaneously the first guests to arrive also.

We were the only guests on this walking tour.

Our guide – I didnt even catch his name – was South American or maybe Italian … I’m really not sure, but he was very good; knowledgable, engaging and friendly.

It’s a bit stressful being the only guests on a walking tour, because you can’t leave it to someone else to ask the intelligent questions.

It was a great tour, and like all local walking tour guides, he took us to places that we would have never found ourselves, and provided context for a lot of things that we saw.

The sun came out so we took our jackets off, then the sun went away so we put our jackets back on again. Then it started to spit with rain so our umbrellas came out, but we didn’t need them after all.

One of the things our guide explained that I hadn’t understood was about the locks used on the river for raising and lowering the water level to allow boats to pass through. I couldn’t understand why they just wouldn’t let the water flow naturally and find its own level.

But the locks were originally designed to hold back water during times of conflict. They would close the locks and let water back up, then release it and cause the enemy to be washed away downstream.

A number of churches in Strasbourg have switched between being Catholic and Protestant. We looked in the (currently) Protestant Church and the organist was warming up the pipe organ ready for a concert this afternoon. It reminded me of my Dad who passed away 8 years ago next week. He would have loved to sit and listen …

After the tour finished around 12.00 noon, we headed back to the Kleber Monument to get some lunch from a Pâtisserie nearby that our guide had pointed out.

We had a baguette with chicken and salade niçoise, plus a croissant.

For full transparency, that was a croissant each.

I had an almond and chocolate one, and MBW had an almond croissant.

After lunch we weren’t sure what to do. I had slept really badly last night getting only maybe 3 or 4 hours sleep so I wasn’t my best self.

We had the options of many museums to learn more about history and art, but we were both fairly ambivalent.

The other option was the recommendation that our hosts – Bernard and Yolande – had given us, and that was to see the Parc de l’Orangerie (Orangerie Park) which is like their botanical gardens.

So we consulted with Google Maps and caught a tram and a bus out that way towards the east of the city then walked the last 200m or so.

It’s a very pretty park, and we spent a pleasant hour or so looking around and taking some photos.

Sadly our thoughts are now turning to the trip home, and what we need to do, to finalise everything to go home.

MBW has purchased some breakable things and she has been trying to figure out how to get them home safely. She has finally settled on purchasing a hard plastic storage box to pack everything into so it doesn’t get squashed.

If we were at home we’d be going to a $2 shop or Reject Shop. Here in Strasbourg they have a shop called “C’est Deux Euros” (It’s two euros), so that’s close enough, without getting into the details that €2.00 is actually more like AUD$3.60 (thanks again Mr Trump).

There is a C’est Deux Euros in the city, not far from the Kleber Monument.

So we figured where we had to walk to for our bus to get to the city, and off we went.

As we were arriving at the bus stop the bus was pulling in, so we dashed across the street – safely of course – and hopped on, feeling pretty smug with ourselves.

And off we went, counting down the number of stops before we had to get off. We knew it was about 8 stops.

At about stop #7 we had an unpleasant realisation. We were on the outbound service, not the inbound service. We were almost at the end of the line, about as far away from the centre of Strasbourg as we could be.

Remember the unplanned trip to Germany? And how it came about due to an earlier poor decision?

Connect those dots.

But as luck would have it, while we were as far from the centre of Strasbourg as we could be, we were a stone’s throw from the German border. Literally.

One stop on the tram.

One of the fun facts that our guide told us this morning was that things are cheaper in Germany.

It was a sign.

So we got into the “D” tram for one stop and – hey presto! – we were in Germany again.

We found a shopping centre and bought a plastic container plus some other stuff, and that was it.

Back on a couple of trams and a bus towards home, and we are in for the night.

We bought some ready meals from E.Lecerc the other day, and while we’re not normally a fan, the last ones we had were pretty good so that will be dinner tonight.

Then I suppose we will need to repack our suitcases for the trip to Congis-sur-Thérouanne, our last AirBNB location before we head home.

It’s about a 4 hour drive from Strasbourg, so with stops that will be 5½ to 6 hours. And then we are only about an hour away from Paris.

We’ve enjoyed Strasbourg. It’s a very pretty and very clean city that is easy to get around. And it is really close to the German border for when you want to pop over to another country.

Something that you simply cannot do when you live in Australia.

Ciao

#Europe2025