Day 3, July 30, 2026

Today we got up and had a good breakfast at the Hampton hotel.  Headed to the European Central Bank to meet Beau’s friend Des from South Africa, who works there and gave us a tour of the building. It is a pretty incredible place. We had to go through Security, show our passports, get badges and then not take pictures of certain things and promise not to post anything on social media. But we got to go all the way to the top and see the wonderful view of the city. Beau showed us several of the places in town where he had lived before.  I think I'm safe to show the view from the top.

After that we came back to the hotel for a bit and then packed to spend the night in Strasburg tonight. We caught the trains which were running late again of course! Went from Frankfurt down through Manheim to Offenburg. From Offenburg, we exited the ICE train which is the fast train, and then got on a regional train with crying babies and bicycles and crossed over the Rhine River into France and got to Strasbourg. 

I was really hoping to get to see some of the country west of here where Junior may have been during World War II, but that would’ve taken many buses and many more hours than this trip, which was two hours even so. Still, the terrain would’ve been about the same. It was only 94 or 96° here but we were sweating plenty since we were pretty pooped. Pic to the left is the Strassburg train station, which looked pretty old. Perhaps it's the same one there when Junior was here.

We went ahead and got an Uber, which let us off actually a long way from our motel because apparently Strassburg has a great big middle area around the cathedral where cars are not allowed to go. But we eventually found where we were going and crashed for a little bit. Then we went to check out the cathedral, which is really amazing.  There are so many stained glass windows that you could stay a year and never see all the details. There are also so many statues inside and out that it would be the same. I bought a little book that talked about what some of it is and we’ll read it and go back tomorrow and see if I can find them again. One thing nice it is free to get in. 

After that Jack and I hit some of the little tourist shops that are around the Square of the cathedral, got rained on with a pop-up storm,  and then we all hit the motel to rest some more.

 

Dinner time was at 8 PM at a very fancy restaurant with very fancy, and very tasty food. I had pork cheeks and noodles and Beau had an assortment of sausages, sauerkraut, potatoes, and escargot. Crème Brûlée for dessert (only two bites!) Jack had nothing because he crashed so hard at the hotel, we couldn’t even wake him up to go to dinner. This was all very late, a lot later than I normally eat. So before we got finished, it was after 10 PM and the Garcon at the restaurant told us about the light show that goes on after 10 o’clock in front of the cathedral. When we exited the restaurant there were people all over the place waiting for this light show. So we videoed until we were sure we could catch the whole thing. And it was REALLY cool. Red lights, blue lights, music and occasionally it would go black and a lady would speak French of some kind. I have no idea what she was saying. Then the music and lights would start again. This lasted for about 10 minutes. And now I’m more than ready to hit the sack.