Saturday 28th September
It was an early start for Mark today as he wanted to watch the AFL Grand Final. So, he set his watch at 6:30 am and duly got up to watch the game. It was raining during this time so I took the opportunity to update my trading blog.
Our plan for the morning was to take a self guided, two hour audio tour of the city. The audio guide is available from the tourist office for 5.50€ per person. Luckily, the rain cleared by the time of our 10 am walk.
The city of Strasbourg was very very crowded this morning. It’s always busy, and especially with lots of students given it has the second largest student population after Paris, but today was extra busy. I suspect a few cruise ships must have docked this morning as there were many groups of guided walking tours taking place and in many different languages.
We navigated our way through our self-guided tour within the two hour time slot and returned our handsets to the Tourist Office. I’d been keen to visit at least one museum and there was just enough time visit the Alsatian Museum. This Museum was set up during German Annexation of the region so as to preserve Alsatian history and it covers the period of the 17th,18th and 19th Centuries. An audio-guide is included with the ticket entry price and takes about one hour to work through all the rooms.
There was enough time after the Museum for us to pick up a sandwich for lunch before we had to collect our rental car. The trickiest aspect of this process was navigating back to the car park and then fitting the car into the narrow parking space. It all went rather smoothly though but Mark was in need of a soothing ale after this stress. So we set off to the Academy of Beer for him to sample their ales. We headed back to the apartment for a rest after this before venturing back out to find somewhere for dinner.
It was 7 pm before we set out again but we didn’t make it too far, literally across the road from our apartment at a brasserie Meteor, Mark had just the one ale there before we stepped out looking for a place for dinner. Many of the restaurants we tried were full but one, Santa Elena, said we could have a table so long as we ‘liberated’ this before 9 am. Feeling very Napoleon-like, we agreed to liberate the table by 9 pm and enjoyed the best meal of our time in this Alsacien region. We were home by the liberation time of 9 pm and ready to tuck in given our big day ahead tomorrow.
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