My Solo Excursions: Strasbourg, France

One morning while visiting Mr X in Germany I rented a car and drove myself across the border to spend some quality time in France. I love France. The only car I could get just happened to be nearly the size of a minivan, which really stinks in Europe where the lanes and the parking spaces are painfully small. But I was just happy that it had a built in GPS system...otherwise I probably would have been too chicken to go. (Without a GPS I am sure I would have gotten hopelessly lost on the way there and ended up calling Mr X from the side of a road who-knows-where sobbing buckets of tears.) Anyway, I made it to Strasbourg quickly and efficiently - too quickly because I ended up getting a speeding ticket. The next challenge was finding parking for my enormous vehicle. I ended up driving like a mad woman, around in circles all over town, seemingly almost always in the wrong direction but eventually I found a good place to park.

I had to cross the Île River via the Ponts-Couverts, located at the end of Petit France (that's the area of Strasbourg located on the Grand Île (the Main Island). Below is a good photo of what it looks like, courtesy of wikipedia.

This is the beginning of Petite France (the rest are my photos):

I wandered around for a couple of hours, perusing the delightful shops and gazing in awe at the quaint architecture and cobblestone streets.

Eventually all that aimless walking made my stomach grumble so I stopped in here for a bite to eat:

I enjoyed a savory flammekueche for my meal, it's a specialty of the region. (I had it once before the last time I visited Strasbourg, but this particular one was much more delicious - I don't know why.)

After my meal, I made my way through Place Kleber and then toward the famous Strasbourg Cathedral in Petite France. Below is just a picture of a well known building adjacent to the cathedral...I'd tell you what it was called but I forgot. Sorry.

This is a clock face on the outside of the cathedral. I'm showing you the picture because later I climbed up one of the towers and saw the inner workings of this clock.

I'm a sucker for stained glass photos and I take pictures of them wherever I go. This is from the inside of the cathedral.

I decided that I needed to burn of some of the macaroons that I munched on earlier that day so I opted to climb the bazillion stairs to the top of the cathedral tower. It took a really long time and I had to stop and catch my breath a few times. (Incidentally the next day my thighs were SO SORE from this climb.) Here are the stairs:

I stopped several times on the way up to rest a bit and of course I snapped pictures like crazy. So here we go - you can tell how far I'm getting up based on the pictures.

The last area before I reached the top was where the inner workings of the clock were. I thought it was very deserving of a photo.

Here's the top of the tower (unfortunately you can't go ALL the way up):

And of course, a view from the top:

PS - I bought so many macaroons in Strasbourg that the shop actually gave me a frequent-macaroon-eater card. After the 7th dozen, I could get a dozen free. I tried to convince Mr X to go back after I left a few times so he could score that free bag but he's not as disgustingly addicted to sugar as me, bless his heart.